* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook *
This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few
restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make
a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different
display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of
the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please
contact an FP administrator before proceeding.
This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under
copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your
country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT
IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.
Title: Forty Years for Labrador
Date of first publication: 1933
Author: Wilfred T. Grenfell (1865-1940)
Date first posted: Dec. 25, 2017
Date last updated: Dec. 25, 2017
Faded Page eBook #20171244
This eBook was produced by: Mardi Desjardins, Al Haines, Howard Ross
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
[Illustration]
FORTY YEARS FOR
LABRADOR
BY
SIR WILFRED GRENFELL
K.C.M.G., M.D. (OXON.), F.R.C.S., F.A.C.S.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON LIMITED
1934
FIRST PUBLISHED MARCH 1933
POPULAR EDITION OCTOBER 1934
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY WILFRED THOMASON GRENFELL
COPYRIGHT, 1932, BY WILFRED GRENFELL
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO REPRODUCE
THIS BOOK OR PARTS THEREOF IN ANY FORM
_Made and Printed in Great Britain._ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_
TO
MY WIFE
PREFACE
A BIOLOGIST, watching one animal in his vivarium to see how an
experiment turns out, expects to arrive nearer the truth as time elapses
and the end draws near. Just so, spectators watching a runner in a race
get more and more interested as the last lap approaches and the goal
looms in sight. Then the runner's achievement is easier to appraise.
Life's struggle, moreover, becomes increasingly interesting now that
philosophers again permit us to regard results as dependent upon causes
which are under the control of the individual runner to a very large
extent.
The title of this new record has been changed, to suggest that this is
the last lap, and that deductions from the facts may be expected to be
more mature and therefore more worth while, provided they are honest.
The consciousness of having to live alongside the first venture into
autobiography involved a kind of vivisection; for to have to tell the
truth about one's real self carries with it the inescapable reproach of
nudism, however salutary that may be for one's spiritual welfare, or
however interesting to others. This effort is more like a 'last
testament'; and it is easier for a doctor to see the reasonableness of
offering to a school of anatomy that which he cannot take with him, and
which should be more useful for dissecting than for any other purpose.
The purpose of this book is the same as that of its predecessor, _A
Labrador Doctor_, written many years ago in response to the persuasion
of friends, as a record of a humble competitor in the race of life who
was pledged to the utmost of his ability to carry the colours of the
Christian theory into practice. To endeavour to foist the story of any
one competitor on to the attention of a busy world would be unpardonable
were it not for the generous insistence of a still larger circle of
friends that the record be brought as closely up to date as the writer
of any autobiography can expect to bring it—though the picture, of
course, cannot be completed this side the Great Divide.
Naturally, the records of childhood and youth must stand unchanged.
Otherwise the entire book has been rewritten, with the better
perspective and, one hopes, the generally accorded riper wisdom of age.
The last chapter, on my religious life, has been this time entitled
'Salaam,' in order to carry all the old English meaning which the word
'farewell' bore—'God be with you till we meet.'
Many new activities have been undertaken since the old book, _A Labrador
Doctor_, appeared. Many new ventures have been entered upon and new
methods devised to carry to the down-and-out brother, in ways he cannot
mistake as being messages of love, that reflection of Divine love which,
wherever it has been intelligently exhibited, has remade man, and
through him is remaking this world. The years have left such
ineffaceable convictions of the truth of this that I have at last
accumulated the conceit which encourages me not merely to send a new
edition to the press, but a new book.
As for this effort in the North, what is it? Is it dead or alive? If
growth is a sign of life, I venture to believe that this record of the
past nearly fifteen years since my pen was laid down will show that the
work has more than its pristine vitality, and is just now entering upon
a new era of enlarged service.
But for the hundreds of colleagues who have so self-effacingly 'lent
more power to my elbow,' the work would never have been possible at all.
They are far too numerous for me to record their names or their service
individually here; but their imprint is indelible, both in our hearts
and on the lives of the fishermen.
To my wife, who was willing to leave all the best which the civilized
world can offer to share my life, both on this lonely shore and in the
infinitely more difficult and prosaic task of working for the Coast in
the world outside, I want to dedicate this book. Like its predecessor,
it would never have come into being but for her.
W. G.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. ON THE SANDS OF DEE 1
II. AT MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE 12
III. WHITECHAPEL AND WALES 28
IV. 'THE LONDON' 45
V. OFF THE DOGGER BANK 59
VI. NORTH OF THE ROARING FORTIES 71
VII. LABRADOR: THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE 86
VIII. THE QUEST OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES 102
IX. WHITE THUNDER 110
X. ST. ANTHONY 121
XI. BUNKERS 135
XII. RESIDUARY LEGATEE 151
XIII. OPEN SESAME 159
XIV. WHO HATH DESIRED THE SEA? 169
XV. NOW IT CAN BE TOLD 183
XVI. ADRIFT ON A PAN OF ICE 196
XVII. IN DOUBLE HARNESS 205
XVIII. THE SIGHT OF SALT WATER UNBOUNDED 217
XIX. LIGHT AND SHADE 229
XX. THEY THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS 236
XXI. NEW VENTURES 245
XXII. 'THE GOOD EARTH' 264
XXIII. AESCULAPIUS 274
XXIV. WORK AS MEDICINE 283
XXV. LABRADOR TAKES A GLIMPSE AT THE ORIENT 294
XXVI. HONOURS 308
XXVII. SERVICE ON THE LABRADOR 320
XXVIII. SALAAM 336
INDEX 349
ILLUSTRATIONS
SIR WILFRED GRENFELL _Frontispiece_
FACE PAGE
THE SANDS OF DEE 1
ESKIMOS AT A MORAVIAN STATION 16
A LONELY SETTLER 49
A LABRADOR FISHERMAN'S HOME 49
LABRADOR IN SUMMER 64
ORPHANS SAWING THEIR WINTER WOOD 97
ORPHANS IN WINTER DRESS 97
ST. ANTHONY SCHOOL 112
ONE BUILDING OF THE LOCKWOOD SCHOOL AT CARTWRIGHT 112
TRAVELLING WITH REINDEER 145
REINDEER AT REST 145
LADY GRENFELL 160
A LABRADOR PRODUCT! 193
ABE, MATE OF THE HOSPITAL BOAT 193
NORTH-WEST RIVER HOSPITAL 208
BATTLE HARBOUR 208
LABRADOR SHEEP 241
CABBAGES—A TRIUMPH 241
A LABRADOR NURSE AND HER CHARGES 256
FLOWERS COVE NURSING STATION 256
HOME INDUSTRIES 289
A UNIT OF THE INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENT AT WORK 289
CONVALESCENTS AT WORK AT ST. ANTHONY 304
THE LOOM ROOM 304
CONCRETE HOSPITAL AT ST. ANTHONY 321
A WARD IN ST. ANTHONY HOSPITAL 321
PLAYTIME IN THE NORTH 336
_Many of the illustrations are from_
_photographs by Professor F. C. Sears_
[Illustration: THE SANDS OF DEE]
CHAPTER I
ON THE SANDS OF DEE
I MUST admit to forty years at the helm: 1932-1892=40. Mathematics is
the one and only science which can prove anything. To-day I like to hear
that some philosophers are courageous enough to question even that. But
even accepting the hypothesis, what of it? Why not regard to-day as the
commencement of my second forty years?
Fifteen years have elapsed since _A Labrador Doctor_ was written. As I
looked through the index, I was amazed to notice how many friends
mentioned in it are among the so-called 'dead.' A photograph suggested
to me to-day how like the colour of my own hair has become to that of
its winter environment; and for the last four years there have been
increasing signs of wear in the faithful old pump. Truly, it is time
which stays. It is we who fly.
Much as the majority of mankind would like to revise the records of
their early days, those records have to stand. The eagerness to get a
story all at once has made serials unpopular in this tabloid age. Yet
life cannot help being a serial; and if parts of the early pages of this
story are already familiar to my readers, I can only hope that the
desire to know what happened next, the longing which used to send me as
a boy running to meet the postman on the mornings when _My Magazine_ was
due, may kindle some of the same reaction in my friends.
When we sense the approaching shadow of the inevitable 'last chapter,'
the fact impresses itself upon us increasingly that the only thing which
even a Croesus can take with him off the stage, which he did not bring
on to it, is that same record which, alas, like the laws of the Medes
and Persians, 'altereth not.'
To be born on the twenty-eighth of February is not altogether without
its compensations. It affords a subject of conversation when you are
asked to put your name in birthday books. It is evident that many people
suppose it to be almost an intrusion to appear on that day. However, it
was perfectly satisfactory to me so long as it was not the twenty-ninth.
Still, I used at times to be oppressed by the danger, so narrowly
missed, of growing up with undue deliberation.
The event occurred in 1865 in Parkgate, near Cheshire, England, whither
my parents had moved to enable my father to take over the school of his
uncle. I was always told that what might be called boisterous weather
signalled my arrival. Experience has since shown me that that need not
be considered a particularly ominous portent in the winter season on the
Sands of Dee.
It is fortunate that the selection of our birthplace is not left to
ourselves. It would most certainly be one of those small decisions which
would later add to the things over which we worry. I can see how it
would have acted in my own case. For my paternal forbears are of Cornish
extraction—a corner of our little island to which attaches all the
romantic aroma of the men who, in defence of England, 'swept the Spanish
Main,' and so long successfully singed the King of Spain's beard, men
whose exploits never fail to stir the blood of Englishmen, and among
whom my direct ancestors had the privilege of playing no undistinguished
part. On the other hand, my visits thither have—romance
aside—convinced me that the restricted foreshore and the precipitous
cliffs are a handicap to the development of youth, compared with the
broad expanses of tempting sands which are closely associated with
another kinsman, whose songs have helped to make them famous, Charles
Kingsley.
My mother was born in India, her father being a colonel of many
campaigns, and her brother an engineer officer in charge during the
siege of Lucknow till relieved by Sir Henry Havelock. At the first Delhi
Durbar no less than forty-eight of my cousins met, all being officers
either of the Indian military or civil service.
To the modern commercial mind the wide sands are a stumbling-block.
Silting up with the years, they have closed the river to navigation, and
converted our once famous Roman city of Chester into a sleepy,
second-rate market-town. The great flood of commerce from the New World
sweeps contemptuously past our estuary, and finds its clearing-house
under the eternal, assertive smoke-clouds which camouflage the miles of
throbbing docks and slums called Liverpool—little more than a dozen
miles distant. But the heather-clad hills of Heswall and the old red
sandstone ridge, which form the ancient borough of the 'Hundred of
Wirral,' afford an efficient shelter from the insistent taint of
out-of-the-worldness.
Every inch of the Sands of Dee was dear to me. I learned to know their
every bank and gutter. Away beyond them there was a mystery in the blue
hills of the Welsh shore, only cut off from us children in reality by
the narrow, rapid water of the channel through the sands, that we called
the 'Deep.' Yet they seemed so high and so far away! The people there
spoke a different language from ours, and all their instincts seemed
diverse. Our own humble neighbours lived by the seafaring genius which
we ourselves loved so much. They made their living from the fisheries of
the river mouth; and scores of times we children would slip away and
spend the day and night with them in their boats.
I was still quite a small boy when a terrible blizzard struck the
estuary while the boats were out, and for twenty-four hours one of the
fishing craft was missing. Only a lad of sixteen was in charge of her—a
boy whom we knew and with whom we had often sailed. All our family were
away from home at the time except myself; and I can still remember the
thrill I experienced when, as representative of the 'Big House'! I was
taken to see the poor lad, who had been brought home at last, frozen to
death.
The men of the opposite shores were shopkeepers and miners. Somehow we
knew that they couldn't help it. The nursery rhyme about 'Taffy was a
Welshman; Taffy was a thief,' because familiar, had not led us to hold
any unduly inflated estimate of the Welsh character. One of my old
nurses did much to redeem it, however. She had undertaken the burden of
my brother and myself during a long vacation, and carried us off bodily
to her home in Wales. Her clean little cottage stood by the side of a
road leading to the village school of the Slate Mining District of
Festiniog. We soon learned that the local boys resented the intrusion of
the two English lads, and they so frequently chased us off the village
green, which was the only playground offered us, that we at last decided
to give battle. We had stored up a pile of slates behind our garden
wall, and, luring the enemy to the gates by the simple method of
retiring before their advance, we saluted them with artillery fire from
a comparatively safe entrenchment. To my horror, one of the first
missiles struck a medium-sized boy right over the eye, and I saw the
blood flow instantly. The awful vision of David and Goliath flashed
across my terror-stricken mind, and I fled incontinently to my nurse's
protection. Subsequently, by her adroit diplomacy, we were not only
delivered from justice, but gained the freedom of the green as well.
Far away up the estuary came the great salt-water marshes which seemed
so endless to our tiny selves. There was also the Great Cop, an
embankment miles long, intended to reach 'from England to Wales,' but
which was never finished because the quicksand swallowed up all that the
workmen could pour into it. Many a time I have stood on the broken end,
where the discouraged labourers had left their very shovels and picks
and trucks and had apparently fled in dismay, as if convicted of the
impiousness of trying to fill the Bottomless Pit. To my childish
imagination the upturned wheelbarrows and wasted trucks and rails always
suggested the banks of the Red Sea after the awful disaster had swept
over Pharaoh and his host. How the returning tide used to sweep through
that, to us, fathomless gulch! It made the old river seem ever so much
more wonderful, and ever so much more filled with adventure.
Many a time, just to dare it, I would dive into the very cauldron, and
let the swirling current carry me to the grassy sward beyond—along
which I would run till the narrowing channel permitted my crossing to
the Great Cop again. I would be drying myself in the sunshine as I went,
and all ready for my scanty garments when I reached my clothing once
more.
Then came the great days when the heavy nor'westers howled over the
Sands—our sea-front was exposed to all the power of the sea right away
to the Point of Ayr—the days when they came in with big spring tides,
when we saw the fishermen doubling their anchors, and carefully
overhauling the holding-gear of their boats, before the flooding tide
drove the men ashore, powerless to do more than watch them battling at
their moorings like living things—the possessions upon which their very
bread depended. And then this one would sink, and another would part her
cable and come hurtling before the gale, until she crashed right into
the great upright blocks of sandstone which, riveted with iron bands to
their copings, were relied upon to hold the main road from destruction.
Sometimes in fragments, and sometimes almost entire, the craft would be
slung clean over the battlements and be left stranded high and dry on
our one village street, a menace to traffic, but a huge joy to us
children.
The fascination of the Sands was greatly enhanced by the numerous birds
which at all times frequented them, in search of the abundant food which
lay buried along the edges of the muddy gutters. There were thousands of
sandpipers in enormous flocks, mixed with ring plovers, knots, dunlins,
and turnstones, which followed the ebb tides and returned again in
whirling clouds before the oncoming floods. Black-and-white
oyster-catchers were always to be found chattering over the great mussel
patches at low water. With their reddish bills, what a trophy a bunch of
them made as we bore them proudly home over our shoulders! Then there
were the big long-billed curlews. What a triumph when one outwitted
them! One of my clearest recollections is discovering a place to which
they were flighting at night by the water's edge; how, having no dog, I
swam out for bird after bird as they fell to my gun—shooting some
before I had even time to put on my shirt again; and my consequent
blue-black shoulder which had to be carefully hidden next day. There
were wild ducks, too, to be surprised in the pools of the big salt
marshes.
From daylight to dark I would wander, quite alone, over endless miles,
entirely satisfied to come back with a single bird, and not in the least
disheartened if I got none. All sense of time used to be lost, and often
enough the sandwich and biscuit for lunch forgotten, so that I would be
forced occasionally to resort to a solitary public-house near a colliery
on our side of the water for 'tea-biscuits,' all that they offered
except endless beer for the miners. I can even remember, when very hard
driven, crossing to the Welsh side for bread and cheese.
These expeditions were made barefoot as long as the cold was not too
great. A diary that I essayed to keep in my eighth year reminds me that
on my birthday, five miles from home in the marshes, I fell head over
heels into a deep hole, while wading out, gun in hand, after some
oyster-catchers which I had shot. The snow was still deep on the
countryside, and the long trot home was never quite forgotten. My grief,
however, was all for the gun.
There was always the joy of venture in those dear old Sands. The
channels cut in them by the flowing tides ran deep, and often
intersected. Moreover, they changed with the varying storms. The rapidly
rising tide, which sent a bore up the main channel as far as Chester,
twelve miles above us, filled first of all these treacherous waterways,
quite silently, and often unobserved. To us, taught to be as much at
home in the water as on the land, they only added spice to our
wanderings. They were nowhere very wide, so, by keeping one's head and
being able to swim, only our clothes suffered by it, and they, being
built for that purpose, did not complain.
One day, however, there was great excitement. The tide had risen rapidly
in the channel along the parade front, and the shrimp fishermen, who
used push-nets in the channels at low tide, had returned without
noticing that one of their number was missing. Word got about just too
late, and already there was half a mile of water, beyond which, through
our telescopes, we could see the poor fellow making frantic signals to
the shore. There was no boat out there, and, a big bank intervening,
there seemed no way to get to him. Watching through our glasses, we saw
him drive the long handle of his net deep into the sand and cling to it,
while the tide rose speedily around him. Meanwhile, a whole bevy of his
mates had rowed out to the bank, and were literally carrying over its
treacherous surface one of their clumsy and heavy fishing punts. It was
a veritable race for life; and never have I watched one with keener
excitement. We actually saw his post give way and wash downstream with
him clinging to it, just before his friends got near. Fortunately,
drifting with the spar, he again found bottom, and was eventually
rescued, half full of salt water. I remember how he fell in my
estimation as a seaman—though I was only a boy at the time.
There were four of us boys in all, of whom I was the second. My next
brother Maurice died when he was only seven, and the fourth, Cecil,
being five years younger than I, left my brother Algernon and myself as
the only real companions for each other. Moreover, an untoward accident,
of which I was the unwitting cause, left my younger brother unable to
share our play for many years. Having no sisters, and scarcely any boy
friends, in the holidays, when all the boys in the school went home, it
might be supposed that my elder brother and I were much thrown together.
But as a matter of fact such was not the case, for our temperaments
being entirely different, and neither of us having any idea of giving
way to the other, we seldom or ever found our pleasures together. And
yet most of the worst scrapes into which we fell were co-operative
affairs. Though I am only anxious to shoulder my share of the
responsibility in the escapades, my brother possessed any genius to
which the family could lay claim, in that as in every other line. He was
my father over again, while I was a second edition of my mother. Father
was waiting to get into the sixth form at Rugby when he was only
thirteen years old. He was a brilliant scholar at Balliol, but had been
compelled to give up study and leave the University temporarily owing to
brain trouble. He never published anything, but would reel off brilliant
short poems or essays for friends at a moment's notice. I used always to
remark that, in whatever company he was, he was always deferred to as an
authority in anything approaching classics. He could read and quote
Greek and Latin like English, spoke German and French fluently, while he
was an excellent geologist, and Fellow of the Geographical Society.
Some of my brother's poems and hymns have been published; his vesper
hymns and wedding hymn are widely used. He has also published a Spanish
grammar, a Greek lexicon, a book of unconventional prayers for boys, an
excellent shortened version of the Psalms for boys' choirs—an infinite
advance for boys on the long and wearisome versions I hated so much in
my own youth. His _Red Book of Spelling_ and international school
spelling competitions, and his copy-books and emphasis for inducing
legible handwriting, have been real contributions to us to-day. While at
Oxford, my brother ran daily, with some friends, during one 'eights
week' a cynical comic paper called _The Rattle_, to boost some theories
he held and which he wished to enforce, and also to 'score' a few of the
dons to whom he objected. This would have resulted in his being asked to
retire for a season from that seat of learning at the request of his
enemies had not our beloved provost routed the special cause of the
whole trouble, who was himself contributing to a London society paper,
by replying that it was not to be wondered at if the scurrilous rags of
London found an echo in Oxford. Moreover, a set of _The Rattle_ was
ordered to be bound and placed in the college archives, where it may
still be seen.
My father having a great deal of responsibility and worry during the
long school terms, as he was not only headmaster, but owned the school
as well, which he had purchased from his great-uncle, used to leave
almost the day the holidays began and travel abroad with my mother. This
accounts for the very unusual latitude allowed to us boys in coming and
going from the house—no one being anxious if now and again we did not
return at night. The school matron was left in charge of the vast empty
barracks and we had the run of play-field, gymnasium, and everything
else we wanted. To outwit the matron was always considered fair play by
us boys, and on many occasions we were more than successful.
One time, when we had been acquiring some new lines of thought from some
trashy boys' books of the period, we became fired with the desire to
enjoy the ruling passion of the professional burglar. Though never kept
short of anything, we decided that one night we would raid the large
school storeroom while the matron slept. As always, the planning was
entrusted to my brother. It was, of course, a perfectly easy affair, but
we played the whole game 'according to Cavendish.' We let ourselves out
of the window at midnight, glued brown paper to the window-panes, cut
out the putty, forced the catch, and stole sugar, currants, biscuits,
and I am ashamed to say port wine, which we mulled in a tin can over the
renovated fire in the matron's own sanctum. In the morning the remnants
were turned over to fishermen friends who were passing alongshore on
their way to catch the early tide.
I had no share in two other of my brother's famous escapades, though at
the time it was a source of keen regret, for we were sent to different
public schools. But we heard with pride how he had extracted phosphorus
from the chemical laboratory and, while drawing luminous ghosts on the
wall for the benefit of the timorous, had set fire to the large
dormitory and the boys' Sunday clothing neatly laid out on the beds,
besides burning himself badly. Later he pleaded guilty to beeswaxing the
seat of the boys in front of him in chapel, much to the detriment of
their trousers and the destruction of the dignity of Sunday worship.
During the time that my parents were away, we never found a moment in
which to be lonely, but on one occasion it occurred to us that the
company of some friends would add to our enjoyment. Why we waited till
my father and mother departed, I do not know, but I recall that
immediately they had gone we spent a much-valued sixpence in
telegraphing to a cousin in London to come down to us for the holidays.
Our message read: 'Dear Sid. Come down and stay the holidays. Father has
gone to Aix.' We were somewhat chagrined to receive the following day an
answer, also by wire: 'Not gone yet. Father.' It appeared that my father
and mother had stayed the night in London in the very house to which we
had wired, and Sid, having to ask his father's permission in order to
get his railway fare, our uncle had shown the invitation to my father.
It was characteristic of my parents that Sid came duly along, but they
could not keep from sharing the joke with my uncle.
During term-time some of our grown-up relatives would occasionally visit
us. But alas, it was only their idiosyncrasies which used to make any
impression upon us. One, a great-uncle, and a very distinguished person,
being Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, was a great friend of
the famous Dr. Jowett, the chancellor. He was the only man we knew who
ever, at any time, stood up long to my father in argument. It was only
on rare occasions that we witnessed such a contest, but I shall never
forget one which took place in the evening in our drawing-room. My
great-uncle was a small man, rather stout and pink, and almost
bald-headed. He grew so absorbed in his arguments, which he always
delivered walking up and down, that on this occasion, coming to an
old-fashioned sofa, he stepped right up on to the seat, climbed over the
back, and went straight on with his remarks.
Whether some of our pranks were suggested by those of which we heard, I
do not remember. One of my father's yarns, however, always stuck in my
memory. For once, being in a very good humour, he told us how when some
distinguished old lady had come to call on his father—a house master
with Arnold at Rugby—he had been especially warned not to interrupt
this important person, who had come to see about her son's entering my
grandfather's 'House.' It so happened that quite unconsciously the lady
in question had seated herself on an old cane-bottomed arm-chair in
which father had been playing, thus depriving him temporarily of a toy
with which he desired to amuse himself. He never, even in later life,
was noted for undue patience, and, after endeavouring in vain to await
her departure, he somehow secured a long pin. Armed with this he crawled
from behind under the seat, and by discreetly probing upwards, succeeded
suddenly in dislodging his enemy.
Our devotions on Sunday were carried out in the parish church of the
little adjoining village of Neston, there being no place of worship of
the Established Church in Parkgate. In term-time we were obliged to go
morning and evening to the long services, which never made any
concessions to youthful capacities. So in holiday-time, though it was
essential that we should go in the morning to represent the House, we
were permitted to stay home in the evening. But even the mornings were a
time of great weariness, and oft-recurrent sermons on the terrible fate
which awaited those who never went to church, and the still more
untoward end which was in store for frequenters of dissenting
'meeting-houses,' failed to awaken in us the respect due to the
occasion.
Usually on the way to church we had to pass by those who dared even the
awful fate of the latter. It was our idea that to tantalize us they wore
especially gorgeous apparel, while we had to wear black Etons and a top
hat—which, by the way, greatly annoyed us. One waistcoat especially
excited our animosity, and from it we conceived the title
'speckle-belly,' by which we ever afterwards designated the whole 'genus
nonconformist.' The entrance to the chapel (ours was the Church!) was
through a door in a high wall over which we could not see; and my
youthful brain used to conjure up unrighteous and strange orgies which
we felt must take place in those precincts which we were never permitted
to enter. Our Sunday Scripture lessons had familiarized us thoroughly
with the perverse habits of that section of the Chosen People who
_would_ serve Baal and Moloch, when it obviously paid so much better not
to do so. But although we counted the numbers which we saw going in, and
sometimes met them coming out, they seemed never to lessen perceptibly.
On this account our minds, with the merciless logic of childhood,
gradually discounted the threatened calamities.
This must have accounted for the lapse in our own conduct, and a sort of
comfortable satisfaction that the Almighty contented Himself in merely
counting noses in the pews. For even though it was my brother who got
into trouble, I shall never forget the harangue on impiety that awaited
us when a most unchristian sexton reported to our father that the pew in
front of ours had been found chalked on the back, so as to make its
occupants the object of undisguised attention from the rest of the
congregation. As circumstantial evidence also against us, he offered
some tell-tale squares of silver paper, on which we had been cooking
chocolates on the steam pipes during the sermon.
At fourteen years of age my brother was sent to Repton, to the House of
an uncle by marriage—an arrangement which has persuaded me never to
send boys to their relatives for training. My brother's pranks were
undoubtedly many, but they were all boyish and legitimate ones. After a
time, however, he was removed at his own request, and sent to Clifton,
where he was head of the school, and the school House also, under Dr.
Percival, the late Bishop of Hereford. From there he took an open
scholarship for Oxford.
It was most wisely decided to send us to separate schools, and therefore
at the age of fourteen I found myself at Marlborough—a school of nearly
six hundred resident boys, on entering which I had won a scholarship.
CHAPTER II
AT MARLBOROUGH COLLEGE
MARLBOROUGH 'COLLEGE,' as we in England designate a large University
preparatory school, is situated in Wiltshire, in a perfectly beautiful
country, close to the Savernake Forest—one of the finest in all
England. Everything and everybody was strange to me on my arrival. Some
Good Samaritan, hearing that I was bound for a certain House, allowed me
to follow him from the station to the inn—for a veritable old inn it
was. It was one of those lovely old wayside hostels along the main road
to the west, which, with the decline of coaching days, found its way
into the market and had fallen to the hammer for the education of youth.
The building formed the end of a long avenue of trees and was approached
through high gates from the main road. It was flanked on the east side,
somewhat inharmoniously, by other houses which served as schoolrooms,
dining-hall, chapel, racquets and fives courts, studies, and other
dwelling-houses. The whole was entirely enclosed so that no one could
pass in or out, after the gates were shut, without ringing up the porter
from his lodge and having one's name taken as being out after hours. At
least it was supposed that no one could, though we boys soon found that
there were more ways than one leading to Rome.
The separate dwelling-houses were named A, B, and C. I was detailed to C
House, the old inn itself. Each House was again divided into three, with
its own house master, and its own special colour and badges. Our three
were at the time 'Sharps,' 'Upcotts,' and 'Bakers.' Our particular
division occupied the second floor, and was reached by great oak
stair-cases, which, if you were smart, you could ascend at about six
steps at a time. This was a special desideratum, because, until you
reached the fifth form, according to law you ascended by the less direct
back stairway.
Our colours were white and maroon, and our sign a bishop's mitre. This
effigy I still find scribbled all over the few book relics which I have
retained. The emblem, when borne subsequently on my velvet football cap,
proved to be the nearest I was ever to approach to that dignified
insignia.
My benefactor, on the night of my arrival, having done more for me than
a new boy could expect of an old one, was whirled off in the stream of
his returning chums long before I had found my resting-place. The
dormitory to which I at last found myself assigned contained no less
than twenty-five beds, and seemed to me a veritable wilderness. If the
coaches which used to stop here could have ascended the stairs, it might
have accommodated several. The room most nearly like it which I can
recall is the great dining-hall of an old manor, into which the knights
in armour rode on horseback to meals, that being far less trouble than
removing one's armour. More or less amicably I obtained possession of a
bed in a good location, under a big window which looked out over the
beautiful gardens below. I cannot remember that I experienced any of
those heart-searchings or forebodings which sentiment deplores as the
inevitable lot of the unprotected innocent.
One informal battle during the first week with a boy possessed of the
sanctity of having come up from the lower school, and therefore being an
'old boy,' achieved for me a greater privilege than the actual decision
perhaps entitled one to enjoy, namely, being left alone. I subsequently
became known as the 'Beast,' owing to my belligerent nature and the
undue copiousness of my hair.
The fact that I was placed in the upper fourth form condemned me to do
my 'prep' in the intolerable barrack called 'Big School'—a veritable
bear-garden to which about three hundred small boys were relegated to
study. Order was kept by a master and a few monitors, who wandered to
and fro from end to end of the building while we were supposed to work.
For my part, I never tried it, partly because the work came very easy to
me, while the 'repetition' was more readily learned from a loose page at
odd times like dinner and chapel, and partly because, winning a
scholarship during the term, I was transferred to a building reserved
for twenty-eight such privileged individuals until they gained the
further distinction of a place in the House classroom, by getting their
transfer into the fifth form.
Besides those who lived in the big quad there were several Houses
outside the gates, known as 'Out-Houses.' The boys there fared a good
deal better than we who lived in college, and I presume paid more highly
for it. Our meals were served in 'Big Hall,' where the whole four
hundred of us were fed. The meals were exceptionally poor; so much so
that we boys at the beginning of term formed what we called brewing
companies, which provided as far as possible breakfasts and suppers for
ourselves all term. As a protection against early bankruptcy, it was our
custom to deposit our money with a rotund but popular school official,
known always by a corruption of his name as 'the Slug.' Every Saturday
night he would dole out to you your deposit made on return from the
holidays, divided into equal portions by the number of weeks in the
term. Once one was in the fifth form, brewing became easy, for one had a
right to a place on the classroom fire for one's kettle or saucepan.
Till then, the space over gas stoves in Big School being strictly
limited, the right was only acquired _vi et armis_. Moreover, most of
the fourth-form boys and the 'Shells,' a class between them and the
fifth, if they had to work after evening chapel, had to sit behind desks
around the house classroom facing the centre, in which as a rule the
fifth-form boys were lazily cooking and devouring their suppers. Certain
parts of those repasts, like sausages, we would import ready cooked from
the 'tuck shop,' and hence they only needed warming up. Breakfast in Big
School was no comfort, and personally I seldom attended it. At dinner
and tea, however, one had to appear, and remain till the doors were
opened again. It was a kind of roll-call; and the penalty for being late
was fifty lines to be written out. As my own habits were never as
regular as they should have been, whenever I was able to keep ahead I
possessed pages of such lines, neatly written out during school hours
and ready for emergencies. On other occasions I somewhat shamefacedly
recall that I employed other boys, who devoted less time to athletics
than was my wont, to help me out—their only remuneration being the 'joy
of service'!
The great desire of every boy who could hope to do so was to excel in
athletics. This fact has much to commend it in such an educational
system, for it undoubtedly kept its devotees from innumerable worse
troubles and dangers. All athletics were compulsory, unless one had
obtained permanent exemption from the medical officer. If one was not
chosen to play on any team during the afternoon, each boy had to go to
gymnasium for drill and exercises, or to 'flannel' and run around the
Aylesbury Arms, an old public-house three-quarters of a mile distant.
Any breach of this law was severely punished by the boys themselves. It
involved a fives batting—that is, a birching carried out with a
hardwood fives bat—after chapel in the presence of the House. As a
breach of patriotism, it carried great disgrace with it, and was very,
very seldom necessary.
No punishments ever touched the boys one-tenth part as much as those
administered by themselves. On one occasion two of the Big School
monitors, who were themselves notorious far more for their constant
breaches of school law than for their observance of it, decided to make
capital at the expense of the sixth form. One day, just as the
dinner-bell rang, they locked the sixth-form door while a conclave was
being held inside. Though everyone was intended to know to whom the
credit belonged, it was understood that no one would dream of giving
evidence against them. But it so happened that their voices had been
recognized from within by one of the sixth-form boys—and bullies and
unpopular though the culprits were, they would not deny their guilt.
Their condign punishment was to be fives-batted publicly in Big
School—in which, however, they regained very considerable popularity by
the way they took a spanking without turning a hair, though it cost no
less than a dozen bats before it was over.
The publicity of Big School was the only redemption of such a
bear-garden, but that was a good feature. It served to make us toe the
line. After tea, it was the custom to have what we called 'Upper School
Boxing.' A big ring was formed, boxing-gloves provided, and any
differences which one might have to settle could be arranged there.
There was more energy than science about the few occasions on which I
appeared personally in the ring, but it was an excellent safety-valve
and quite an evolutionary experience.
The exigency of having to play our games immediately after noon dinner
had naturally taught the boys at the head of athletic affairs that it
was not wise to eat too much. Dinner was the one solid meal which the
college provided, and most of us wanted it badly enough when it came
along, especially the suet puddings which went by the name of 'bollies'
and were particularly satisfying. But whenever any game of importance
was scheduled, a remorseless card used to be passed round the table just
after the meat stage, bearing the ominous legend, 'No bolly to-day.' To
make sure that there were no truants, all hands were forced to
'Hooverize.' Oddly enough, beer in large blue china jugs was freely
served at every dinner. We called it 'swipes,' and boys, however small,
helped themselves to as much as they liked. Moreover, as soon as the
game was over, all who had their House colours might come in and get
swipes served to them freely through the buttery window. Both practices,
I believe, have long since fortunately fallen into desuetude.
To encourage the budding athlete there was an excellent custom of
classifying not only the players who attained the first team; but beyond
them there were 'the Forty' who wore velvet caps with tassels, 'the
Sixty' who wore velvet caps with silver braid, 'the Eighty,' and even
'the Hundred'—all of whom were posted from time to time, and so
stimulated their members to try for the next grade.
Like every other school there were bounds beyond which one might not go,
and therefore beyond which one always wanted to go. Compulsory games
limited the temptation in that direction very considerably; and my own
breaches were practically always to get an extra swim. We had an
excellent open-air swimming-pool, made out of a branch of the river
Kennett, and were allowed one bathe a day, besides the dip before
morning chapel, which only the few took and which did not count as a
bathe. The punishment for breaking the rule was severe, involving a week
off for a first offence. But one was not easily caught, for even a
sixth-former found hundreds of naked boys very much alike in the water
and the fact of anyone having transgressed the limit was very hard to
detect. Nor were we bound to incriminate ourselves by replying to
leading questions.
[Illustration: ESKIMOS AT A MORAVIAN STATION]
Late for Gates was a more serious crime, involving detention from
beloved games, and many were the expedients to which we resorted to
avoid such an untoward contingency. I remember well waiting for an hour
outside the porter's view, hoping for some delivery wagon to give me a
chance to get inside. For it was far too light to venture to climb the
lofty railings before prep time. Good fortune ordained, however, that a
four-wheel cab should come along in time, containing the parents of a
'hopeful' in the sick-room. It seemed a desperate venture, for to run
the gate was a worse offence than being late and owning up. But we
succeeded by standing on the off step, unquestioned by the person
inside, who guessed at once what the trouble was, and who proved to be
sport enough to engage the porter while we got clear. Later on a
scapegrace who had more reason to require some by-way than myself
revealed to me a way which involved a long detour and a climb over the
laundry roof. Of this, on another occasion, I was sincerely glad to
avail myself. One of the older boys, I remember, made a much bolder
venture. He waited till dusk, and then boldly walked in through the
masters' garden. As luck would have it, he met our form master, whom we
will call Jones, walking the other way. It so happened he possessed a
voice which he knew was much like that of another master, so, simply
sprinting a little, he called out, 'Night, night, Jones,' and got by
without discovery.
Our chapel in those days was not a thing of beauty; but since then it
has been rebuilt (out of our stomachs, the boys used to say) and is a
model work of art. Attendance at chapel was compulsory, and no 'cuts'
were allowed. Moreover, once late, you were given lines, besides losing
your chapel half-holiday. So the extraordinary zeal exhibited to be
marked off as present should not be attributed to religious fervour. The
chapel was entered from quad by two iron gates, with the same lofty
railings which guarded the entrance on each side. The bell tolled for
five minutes, then was silent one minute, and then a single toll was
given, called 'stroke.' At that instant the two masters who stood by the
pillars guarding each gate jumped across, closing the gates if they
could, and everyone outside was late. Those inside the open walk—the
length of the chapel that led to the doors at the far end—then
continued to march in.
During prayers each form master sat opposite his form, all of which
faced the central aisle, and marked off those present. Almost every
morning half-dressed boys, with shirts open and collars unbuttoned,
boots unlaced, and jumping into coats and waistcoats as they dashed
along, could be seen rushing towards the gate during the ominous minute
of silence. There was always time to get straight before the mass of
boys inside had emptied into chapel; and I never remember a gate master
stopping a boy before stroke for insufficiency of coverings. Many were
the subterfuges employed to get excused, and naturally some form masters
were themselves less regular than others, though you never could
absolutely count on any particular one being absent. Twice in my time
gates were rushed—that is, when stroke went, such crowds of flying boys
were just at the gate that the masters were unable to stop the
onslaught, and were themselves brushed aside or knocked down under the
seething mass of panic-stricken would-be worshippers. On one of these
occasions we were forgiven—stroke was ten seconds early; and on the
other, a half-holiday was stopped, as one of the masters had been
injured. To trip one's self up and get a bloody nose, or possibly a face
scratched on the gravel, and then a sick cut from the kindly old school
doctor, was one of the more common ways boys discovered of saving their
chapel half—when it was a very close call.
The school surgery was presided over in my day by a much-beloved old
physician of the old school, called Fergus, which cognomen the boys had
so long ago corrupted into Fungi that many a lad was caught mistakenly
addressing the old gentleman as Dr. Fungi—an error I always fancied he
rather appreciated.
By going to surgery you could very frequently escape evening chapel—a
very desirable event if you had a big brew coming off in classroom, for
you could get things cooked and have plenty of room on the fire before
the others were out. But one always had to pay for the advantage, the
old doctor being very much addicted to potions. I never shall forget the
horrible tap in the corner, out of which cough mixture flowed as 'a
healing for the nations,' but which, nasty as it was, was the lowest
price at which one could purchase the cut. Some boys, anxious to cut
lessons, found that by putting a little soap in one's eye that organ
would become red and watery. This art they practised so successfully
that sometimes for weeks they would be forbidden to do lessons on
account of eye-strain. They had to use lotions, eye-shades, and every
spectacle possible, but all to no avail. Sometimes they used so much
soap that I was sure the doctor would suspect the bubbles.
I had two periods in sick-room with a worrying cough, where the time was
always made so pleasant that one was not tempted to hasten recovery.
Diagnosis, moreover, was not so accurate in those days as it might have
been, and the dear old doctor took no risks. So at the age of sixteen I
was sent off for a winter to the South of France, with the diagnosis of
congestion of the lungs.
One of my aunts, a Miss Hutchinson, living at Hyères in the South of
France, was delighted to receive me. With a widowed friend and two
charming and athletic daughters, she had a very pretty villa on the
hills overlooking the sea. My orders—to live out-of-doors—were very
literally obeyed. In light flannel costumes we roamed the hills after
moths and butterflies, early and late. We kept the frogs in miniature
ponds in boxes covered with netting, providing them with bamboo ladders
to climb and so tell us when it was going to be wet weather. We had also
enclosures in which we kept bands of trapdoor spiders, which used to
afford us intense interest with their clever artifices. To these we
added the breeding of the more beautiful butterflies and moths, and so,
without knowing what we were learning, we were taught many and valuable
truths of life. There were horses to ride also, and a beautiful _plage_
to bathe upon. It was always sunny and warm, and I invariably look back
on that winter as spent in paradise. I was permitted to go over with a
young friend to the Carnival at Nice, where, disguised as a clown, and
then as a priest, with the abandon of boys, we enjoyed every moment of
the time—the world was so big and so wonderful. The French that I had
very quickly learned, as we always spoke it at our villa, stood me on
this occasion in good stead. Better still, I happened, when climbing
into one of the flower-bedecked carriages parading in the _bataille des
fleurs_—which, being in costume, was quite the right thing to do—to
find that the owner was an old friend of my family, one Sir William
Hutt. He at once carried me to his home for the rest of the Carnival,
and, of course, made it doubly enjoyable.
A beautiful expedition, made later in that region which lives in my
memory, was to the gardens at La Mortola, just over the Italian border,
made famous by the frequent visits of Queen Victoria to them. They were
owned by Sir Thomas Hanbury, whose wife was my aunt's great friend.
The quaintness of the memories which persist longest in one's mind often
amuses me. We used, as good Episcopalians, to go every Sunday to the
little English Church on the rue des Palmiers. Alas, I can remember only
one thing about those services. The clergyman had a peculiar impediment
in his speech which made him say his _h_'s and _s_'s both as _sh_. Thus
he always said 'shuman' for 'human,' and invariably prayed that God
might be pleased to 'shave the Queen.'
About the middle of the winter I realized that I had made a mistake. In
writing home I had so enthusiastically assured my father that the place
was suiting my health that he wrote back that he thought in that case I
might stand a little tutoring, and forthwith I was despatched every
morning to a Mr. B., an Englishman, whose house, called the Hermitage,
was in a thick wood. I soon discovered that Mr. B. was obliged to live
abroad for his health, and that the coaching of small boys was only a
means to that end. He was a good instructor in mathematics, a study
which I always loved, but he insisted on my taking Latin and French
literature, for neither of which I had the slightest taste. I
consequently made no effort whatever to improve my mind, a fact which
did not in the least disturb his equanimity. The great interests of
those journeys to the Hermitage were the fables of La Fontaine—which I
learned as 'repetition' and enjoyed—and the enormous numbers of lizards
on the walls, which could disappear with lightning rapidity when seen,
though they would stay almost motionless, waiting for a fly to come
along, which they then swallowed alive. They were so like the stones one
could almost rub one's nose against them without seeing them. Each time
I started I used to cut a little switch for myself and try to switch
them off their ledges before they vanished. The attraction of the act
lay in that it was almost impossible to accomplish. But if you did, they
scored a bull's-eye by incontinently discarding their tails, which made
them much harder to catch next time, and seemed in no way to incommode
them, though it served to excuse my conscience of cruelty. At the same
time I have no wish to pose as a protector of flies.
Returning to Marlborough School the following summer, I found that my
father, who knew perfectly the thorough groundwork I had received in
Greek and Latin, had insisted on my being given a remove into the lower
fifth form _in absentia_. Both he and I were aware that I could do the
work easily; but the form master resented it and had already protested
in vain. I believe he was a very good man in his way, and much liked by
those whom he liked. But alas, I was not one of them; and never once,
during the whole time I was in his form, did I get one single word of
encouragement out of him. My mathematical master, and 'stinks,' or
chemical master, I was very fond of, and in both those departments I
made good progress.
The task of keeping order in a chemistry class of boys is never easy.
The necessary experiments divert the master's eye from the class and
always give opportunity for fooling. Added to this was the fact that our
'stinks' master, like many scientific teachers, was far too
good-natured, and himself half enjoyed the diversion which his
experiments gave. When obliged to punish a boy caught _flagrante
delicto_, he invariably looked out for some way to make it up to him
later. Thus, on one occasion, in most righteous anger, just as if a
parenthesis to the remark he was making, he interposed, 'Come and be
caned, boy. My study, twelve o'clock.' When the boy was leaving, very
unrepentant after keeping the appointment, in the same parenthetical way
the master remarked, 'Go away, boy. Cake and wine, my room, five
o'clock'—which proved eventually the most effective part of the
correction.
To children there always appears a gap between them and grown-ups as
impassable as that which Abraham is made to describe as so great 'that
they who would pass to and fro cannot.' As we grow older, we cease to
see it, but it exists all the same. Sometimes grown-ups are apt to
grudge the time and trouble put into apparently transient pleasures. A
trivial strawberry feast, given to children on our dear old lawn under
the jasmine and rose bushes, still looms as a happy memory of my
parents' love for children, punctuated by the fact that though by
continuing a game in spite of warning I broke a window early in the
afternoon and was banished to the nursery as advised, my father forgave
me an hour later, and himself fetched me down again to the party.
To teach us independence, my father put us on an allowance at a very
early age, with a small bank account, to which every birthday he added
five pounds on our behalf. We had no pony at that time, indeed had not
yet learned to ride, so our deposits always went by the name of 'pony
money.' This was an excellent plan, for we did not yet value money for
itself, and were better able to appreciate the joy of giving because it
seemed to postpone the advent of our pony. However, when we were thought
to have learned to value so sentient a companion and to be likely to
treat him properly, a Good Samaritan was permitted to present us with
one, ever afterwards to be counted one of our most cherished friends. To
us, she was an unparalleled beauty. How many times we fell over her
head, and over her tail, no one can record. She always waited for you to
remount, so it did not much matter; and we were taught that great lesson
in life, not to be afraid of falling, but to learn how to take a fall.
My own bent, however, was never for the things of the land, and though
gallops on the Dee Sands, and races with our cousins, who owned a
broncho and generally beat us, had their fascination, boats were the
things which appealed most to me.
Having funds at our disposal, we were allowed to purchase material and,
under the supervision of a local carpenter, to build a boat ourselves.
To this purpose our old back nursery was forthwith allocated. The craft
which we desired was a canoe that would enable us to paddle or drift
along the deep channels of the river and allow us to steal upon the
flocks of birds feeding at the edges. Often in memory I enjoy those days
again—the planning, the modelling, the fitting, the setting-up, and at
last, the visit of inspection of our parents. Alas, stiff-necked in our
generation, we had insisted on straight lines and a square stern. Never
shall I forget the indignation aroused in me by a cousin's remark, 'It
looks awfully like a coffin.' The resemblance had not previously struck
either of us, and father had felt that the joke was too dangerous a one
to make and had said nothing. But the pathos of it was that we now saw
it all too clearly. My brother explained that the barque was intended to
be not 'seen.' Ugliness was almost desirable. It might help us if we
called it the _Reptile_, and painted it red—all of which suggestions
were followed. But still I remember feeling a little crestfallen when,
after launching it through the window, it lay offensively resplendent
against the vivid green of the grass. It served, however, for a time,
ending its days honourably by capsizing a friend and me, guns and all,
into the half-frozen water of the lower estuary while we were stalking
some curlew. I had to run home dripping. My friend's gun, moreover,
having been surreptitiously borrowed from my cousin's father, was
recovered the following day, to our unutterable relief. Out of the
balance of the money spent on the boat, we purchased a pin-fire
breech-loading gun, the pride of my life for many days. I was being kept
back from school at the time on account of a cold, but I was not
surprised to find myself next day sitting in a train, bound for
Marlborough, and 'referred once more to my studies.'
A little later, my father, not being satisfied, took me away to read
with a tutor for the London matriculation, in which I received a first
class.
A large boarding-school in England is like a miniature world. One makes
many acquaintances, who change as one gets pushed into new classes, so
at that stage one makes few lasting friends. Those who remain till they
attain the sixth form and make the school teams probably form more
permanent friendships. I at least think of that period as one when one's
bristles were generally up, and, though many happy memories linger and I
have found that to be an old Marlburian is a bond of friendship all the
world over, it is the little oddities which one remembers best. I have
the greatest love for the old school.
A new scholarship boy had one day been assigned to the closed
corporation of our particular classroom. To me he had many attractions,
for he was a genius both in mathematics and chemistry. We used to love
talking over the problems that were set us as voluntary tasks for our
spare time; and our united excursions in those directions were so
successful that we earned our class more than one 'hour off' as rewards
for the required number of stars given for pieces of work. My friend
had, however, no use whatever for athletics. He had never been from home
before, had no brothers and five sisters, was the pet of his parents,
and naturally somewhat of a square plug in a round hole in our school
life. He hated all conventions, and was always in trouble with the boys,
for he entirely neglected his personal appearance, while his fingers
were always discoloured with chemicals, and he would not even feign an
interest in the things for which they cared. I can remember him sitting
on the foot of my bed, talking me to sleep more than once with some new
plan he had devised for a self-steering torpedo or an absolutely
reliable flying machine. He had received the sobriquet of 'Mad G.,' and
there was some justice in it from the opposition point of view. I had
not realized, however, that he was being bullied—on such a subject he
would never say a syllable—till one day as he left classroom I saw a
large lump of coal hit him square on the head and a rush of blood follow
it that made me hustle him off to surgery. Scalp wounds are not so
dangerous as they are bloody to heads as thick as ours. His explanation
that he had fallen down was too obvious a distortion of truth to deceive
even our kindly old doctor. But he asked no further question, seeing
that it was a point of honour. The matter, however, forced an
estrangement between myself and some of my fellows that I realized
afterwards was excellent for me. Forthwith we moved my friend's desk
into my corner of the room, which was always safe when I was around,
though later some practices of the others to which I took exception led
to a combination which I thought of then as that made by the Jews to
catch Paul, and which I foiled in a similar way, watchfully eluding them
when they were in numbers together, but always ready to meet one or two
at a time. The fact that I had just taken up racquets impressed it on my
memory, for considering the classroom temporarily unsafe for prep work,
I used that building as a convenient refuge for necessary study. It
would have been far better to have fought it out and taken, if
unavoidable, whatever came to me—had it been anywhere else I should
probably have done so. But the classroom was a close corporation for
Foundation scholars, and not one of my chums had access to it to see
fair play.
My friendship for Mad G. was largely tempered by my own love for
anything athletic, and eccentricities paid a very heavy price among all
boys. Thus, though I was glad to lend my protection to my friend, we
never went about together—as such boys as he always lived the life of
hermits in the midst of the crowd. I well remember one other boy, made
eccentric by his peculiar face and an unfortunate impediment of speech.
No such boy should have been sent to an English public school as it was
in my day. His stutter was no ordinary one, for it consisted, not in
repeating the first letter or syllable, but in blowing out both cheeks
like a balloon and making noises which resembled a back-firing motor
engine. It was the custom of our form master to make us say our
repetition by each boy taking one line, the last round being always
expressed—that is, unless you started instantly the boy above you
finished, the next boy began and took your place. I can still see and
hear the unfortunate J. getting up steam for his line four or five boys
ahead of time, so that he might explode at the right moment; which
desirable end, however, he but very rarely accomplished, and never
catching up, he used, like the man in the parable, always to 'begin with
shame to take the lowest place.' Sometimes the master in a merciful mood
allowed us to write a line, but that was risky, for it was considered no
disgrace to circumvent him, and under those circumstances it was easy
for the next boy to write his own and then yours, and pass it along if
he saw you were in trouble.
There was, and I think with some reason, a pride among the boys on their
appearance on certain occasions. It went by the name of good form. Thus,
on Sundays at morning chapel, we always wore a button-hole flower if we
could. My dear mother used to post me along a little box of flowers
every week—nor was it by any means wasted energy, for not only did the
love for flowers become a hobby and a custom with many of us through
life, and a help to steer clear of sloppiness in appearance, but it was
a habit quite likely to spread to the soul. Beyond that, the picture of
my mother, with the thousand worries of a large school of small boys on
her hands, finding time to gather, pack, address, and post each week
with her own hands so fleeting and inessential a token of her love, has
a thousand times arisen to my memory, and led me to consider some
apparently quite unnecessary little labour of love as being well worth
the time and trouble. It is these deeds of love—not words, however
touching—that never fade from the soul.
Form is a part of the life of all English schools, and the boys think
much more of it than sin. At Harrow you may not walk in the middle of
the road as a freshman; and in American schools and universities, such
regulations as the 'fence' laws at Yale show that they have emulated and
even surpassed us in these. It was, however, a very potent influence,
and we were ridiculously sensitive about breaches of it. Thus, on a
certain prize day my friend Mad G., having singularly distinguished
himself in his studies, his parents came all the way from their home, at
great expense to themselves, to see their beloved and only son honoured.
I presume that, though wild horses would not drag anything out of the
boy at school, he had communicated to them the details of some little
service rendered. For to my horror I was stopped by his mother, whom I
subsequently learned to love and honour above most people, and actually
kissed while walking in the open quad—strutting like a peacock, I
suppose, for I remember feeling as if the bottom had suddenly fallen out
of the earth. The sequel, however, was an invitation to visit their home
in North Wales for the Christmas holidays, where there was rough
shooting—the only kind I really cared for—boating, rock-climbing,
bathing, and the companionship of as lovely a family as it was possible
to meet anywhere. Many a holiday afterward we shared together, and the
kindness showered upon me I shall never be able to forget, or, alas,
return; for my dear friend Mad G. has long ago gone to his rest, and so
have both his parents, whom I loved almost as my own.
We were taught that the only excuse that made the taking of animal life
honourable was for some useful purpose, like food or study or
self-preservation. Several cases of birds stuffed and set up when we
were fourteen and sixteen years of age still adorn the old house. Every
bit had to be done by ourselves, my brother making the cases and I the
rock-work and taxidermy. The hammering-up of sandstone and granite, to
cover the glue-soaked brown paper that we moulded into rocks, satisfied
my keenest instinct for making messes, and only the patience of old-time
domestics would have 'stood for it.' My brother specialized in birds'
eggs, and I in butterflies and moths. Later we added seaweeds, shells,
and flowers. Some of our collections have been dissipated; and, though
we have not a really scientific acquaintance with either of these
kingdoms, we acquired a hail-fellow-well-met familiarity with all of
them, which has enlivened many a day in many parts of the world as we
have journeyed through life. Moreover, though purchased pictures have
other values, the old cases set on the walls of one's den bring back
memories that are the joy and solace of many lonely moments later in
life—each rarer egg, each extra butterfly, picturing some day or place
of keen triumph, otherwise long since forgotten. Here, for instance, is
a convolvulus hawk father found killed on a mountain in Switzerland;
there an Apollo I caught in the Pyrenees; here a red burnet with a
five-eyes captured as we raced through the bracken on Clifton Downs, and
there are purple emperors lured down to meat baits in the Surrey Woods.
Many a Sunday at school have I stolen into the great forest, my
butterfly net under my coat, to try and add a new specimen to my hoard.
We were always supplied with good key-books, so that we should be able
to identify our specimens, and also to search for others more
intelligently. One value of my own specialty was that for the moths it
demanded going out in the night, and the thrills of out-of-doors in the
beautiful summer evenings, when others were fugging in the house or had
gone to bed, used actually to make me dance around on the grass. The
dark lantern, the sugaring of the tree-stems with intoxicating potions,
and the subsequent excitement of searching for specimens, fascinated me
utterly.
CHAPTER III
WHITECHAPEL AND WALES
IN 1883, my father became anxious to give up teaching and to confine
himself more exclusively to the work of a clergyman. With this in view
he contemplated moving to London, where he had been offered the
chaplaincy of the huge London Hospital. I remember his talking it over
with me, and then asking if I had any idea what I wanted to do in life.
It had never occurred to me to look forward to a profession; except that
I knew that the heads of tigers, deer, and all sorts of trophies of the
chase which adorned our house came from soldier uncles and others who
hunted them in India, and I had always thought that their occupation
would suit my taste admirably. It never dawned on me that I would have
to earn my bread and butter. I had never seen real poverty in others,
for all the fisherfolk in our village seemed to have enough. I hated
dress and frills, and envied no one. At school, and on the Riviera, and
even in Wales, I had never noticed any want. It is true that a number of
dear old ladies from the village came in the winter months to our house
once or twice a week to get soup. They used to sit in the back hall,
each with a round tin can with a bucket handle. These were filled with
hot broth, and the old ladies were given a repast as well before
leaving. As a matter of fact, I very seldom actually saw them, for that
part of the house was entirely cut off by large double
green-baize-covered doors. But I often knew that they must have been
there, because our Skye terrier, though fed to overflowing, usually
attended these séances, and doubtless, while the old ladies were
occupied with lunch, sampled the cans of soup which stood in rows along
the floor. He used to come along with dripping whiskers which betrayed
his excursion, and the look of a connoisseur in his large round eyes—as
if he were certifying that justice had been done once more in the
kitchen.
While I was in France the mother of my best chum in school had been
passing through Marseilles on her way home from India, and had most
kindly taken me on a jolly trip to Arles, Avignon, and other historical
places. She was the wife of a famous missionary in India. She spoke
eight languages fluently, including Arabic, and was a perfect _vade
mecum_ of interesting information.
About the time of my father's question, my friend's mother was staying
in Chester with her brother-in-law, the Lord-Lieutenant of Denbighshire.
It was decided that, as she was a citizeness of the world, no one could
suggest better for what profession my peculiar talents fitted me. The
interview I have long ago forgotten, but I recall coming home with a
confused idea that tiger-hunting would not support me, and that she
thought I ought to become a clergyman, though it had no attraction for
me, and I decided against it.
None of our family on either side, as far as I can find out, had ever
practised medicine. My own experience of doctors had been rather a
chequered one, but at my father's suggestion I gladly went up and
discussed the matter with our country family doctor. He was a fine man,
and we boys were very fond of him and his family, his daughter being our
best girl friend. He had an enormous practice, in which he was eminently
successful. The number of horses he kept, and the miles he covered with
them, were phenomenal to my mind. He had always a kind word for
everyone, and never gave us boys away, though he must have known many of
our pranks played in our parents' absence. The only remaining memory of
that visit was that the old doctor brought down from one of his shelves
a large jar, out of which he produced a pickled human brain. I was
thrilled with entirely new emotions. I had never thought of man's body
as a machine. That this weird, white, puckered-up mass could be the
transmitter of all that made man, that it controlled our physical
strength and growth and our responses to life, that it made one into Mad
G. and another into me—why, it was absolutely marvellous. It attracted
me as has the gramophone, the camera, the automobile, and the aeroplane.
My father saw at once on my return that I had found my real interest,
and put before me two alternative plans, one to go to Oxford, where my
brother had just entered, or to join him in London and take up work in
the London Hospital and University, preparatory to going in for
medicine. I chose the latter at once—a decision I have never regretted.
I ought to say that business as a career was not suggested. In England,
especially in those days, these things were more or less hereditary. My
forbears were all fighters or educators, except for an occasional
statesman or banker. Probably there is some advantage in this plan.
Most of the subjects for the London matriculation were quite new to me,
especially English, but with the fresh incentive and new vision of
responsibility I set to work with a will, and soon had mastered the
required subjects sufficiently to pass the examination with credit. But
I must say here that Professor Huxley's criticisms of English
public-school teaching of that period were none too stringent. I wish
with all my heart that others had spoken out as bravely, for in those
days that wonderful man was held up to our scorn as an atheist and
iconoclast. We spent years of life and heaps of money on our education,
and came out knowing nothing of the special subjects which fit us for
everyday life, except that which we picked up incidentally.
When I followed my father to London, I was not familiar with one word of
botany, zoology, physics, physiology, or comparative anatomy, or any
natural science whatever. About the universe which I inhabited I knew as
little as I did about cuneiform writings. Except for my mathematics and
a mere modicum of chemistry, I had nothing on which to base my new work.
Students coming from Government free schools, or almost anywhere, had a
great advantage over men of my previous education; I did not even know
how to study wisely. Again, as Huxley showed, medical education in
London was so divided, there being no teaching university, that the
curriculum was ridiculously inadequate. There were still being foisted
upon the world far too many medical men of the type of Bob Sawyer.
Our hospital was the largest in the British Isles, and in the midst of
the poorest population in England, being located in the famous
Whitechapel Road, and surrounded by all the purlieus of the East End of
the great city. Patients came from Tilbury Docks to Billingsgate Market,
and all the river haunts between, from Shadwell, Deptford, Wapping,
Poplar, from Petticoat Lane and Ratcliff Highway, made famous by crime
and by Charles Dickens. They came from Bethnal Green, where queens and
their courts once dwelt, but now the squalid and crowded home of
poverty; from Stratford and Bow, and a hundred other slums.
The hospital had some nine hundred beds, which were always so full that
the last surgeon admitting to his wards constantly found himself with
extra beds poked in between the regulation number through sheer
necessity. It afforded an unrivalled field for clinical experience and
practical teaching.
Looking back, I am grateful to my _alma mater_, and have that real
affection for her that every loyal son should have. But even that does
not conceal from me how poor a teaching establishment it was. Those who
had natural genius, and the advantages of previous scientific training,
who were sons of medical men or had served apprenticeships to them,
possibly did not suffer so much through its inefficiency. But men in my
position suffered quite unconsciously a terrible handicap, and it was
only the influences for which I had nothing whatever to thank the
hospital that saved me from the catastrophes which overtook so many who
started with me.
To begin with, there was no supervision of our lives whatever. We were
flung into a coarse and evil environment, among men who too often took
pride in their shame, just to sink or swim. Not one soul cared which you
did. I can still remember numerous cases where it simply meant that men
paid quite large sums for the privilege of sending the sons they loved
direct to the devil. I recall one lad whom I had known at school. His
father lavished money upon him, and sincerely believed that his son was
doing him credit and would soon return to share his large practice and
bring to it all the many new advances he had learned. The reports of
examinations successfully passed he fully accepted; and the non-return
of his son at vacation times he put down to professional zeal. It was
not till the time came for the boy to get his degree and return that the
father discovered that he had lived exactly the life of the prodigal in
the parable, and had neither attended college nor attempted a single
examination of any kind whatever. It broke the father's heart and he
died.
Examinations for degrees were held by the London University or the Royal
College of Physicians and Surgeons, never by the hospital Schools. The
former were practically race committees; they did no teaching, but when
you had done certain things they allowed you to come up and be examined,
and if you got through a written and _viva voce_ examination, you were
inflicted on an unsuspecting public licensed to kill—often only too
literally so.
It is obvious on the face of it that this could be no proper criterion
for so important a decision as to qualifications; special crammers
studied the examiners, their questions, and their teachings, and luck
had a great deal to do with success. While some men never did themselves
justice in examinations, others were exactly the reverse. Thus I can
remember one resident accoucheur being 'ploughed,' as we called it, in
his special subject, obstetrics—and men to whom you would not trust
your cat getting through with flying colours.
First you had to be signed up for attending courses of lectures on
certain subjects. This was simply a matter of tipping the beadle, who
marked you off. I personally attended only two botany lectures during
the whole course. At the first some practical joker had spilled a
solution of carbon bisulphide all over the professor's platform, and the
smell was so intolerable that the lecture was prorogued. At the second,
some wag let loose a couple of pigeons, whereupon everyone started
either to capture them or stir them up with pea-shooters. The professor
said, 'Gentlemen, if you do not wish to learn, you are at liberty to
leave.' The entire class walked out. The insignificant sum of two and
sixpence secured me my sign-up for the remainder of the course.
Materia medica was almost identical; and while we had better fortune
with physiology, no experiments and no apparatus for verifying its
teachings were ever shown us.
Our chemistry professor was a very clever man, but extremely eccentric,
and his class was pandemonium. I have seen him so frequently pelted with
peas when his head was turned as to force him to leave the amphitheatre
in despair.
There was practically no histology taught and little or no pathology.
Almost every bit of the microscope which I did was learned on my own
instrument at home. Anatomy, however, we were well taught in the
dissecting-room, where we could easily obtain all the work we needed.
But not till Sir Frederick Treves became our lecturer in anatomy and
surgery was it worth while doing more than pay the necessary sum to get
signed up.
On the other hand, we had to attend in the dispensary, actually to
handle drugs and learn about them—an admirable rule. Personally I went
once, fooled around making egg-nog, and arranged with a considerate
druggist to do the rest that was necessary. Yet I satisfied the
examiners at the College of Physicians and Surgeons and those of the
London University at the preliminary examination for Bachelor of
Medicine—the only ones which they gave which carried questions in any
of these subjects.
In the athletic life of the University, however, I took great interest,
and was secretary in succession of the cricket, football, and rowing
clubs. I helped remove the latter from the old river Lea to the Thames,
to raise the inter-hospital rowing championship and start the united
hospitals' rowing club. I found time to row in the inter-hospital race
for two years and to play in the football team in the two years in which
we won the inter-hospital football cup. A few times I played with the
united hospitals' team; but I found that their ways were not mine, as I
had been taught to despise alcohol as a beverage and to respect all
kinds of womanhood. For three years I played regularly for Richmond—the
best of the London clubs at the time—and subsequently for Oxford, being
put in the team the only term I was in residence. I also threw the
hammer for the hospital in the united hospitals' sports, winning second
place for two years. Indeed, athletics in some form occupied every
moment of my spare time.
It was in my second year, 1885, that, returning from an out-patient case
one night, I turned into a large tent erected in a purlieu of Shadwell,
the district to which I happened to have been called. It proved to be an
evangelistic meeting of the then famous Moody and Sankey. It was so new
to me that, when a tedious prayer-bore began with a long oration, I
started to leave. Suddenly the leader, who I learned afterwards was D.
L. Moody, called out to the audience, 'Let us sing a hymn while our
brother finishes his prayer.' His practicality interested me, and I
stayed the service out. When I left, it was with a determination either
to make religion a real effort to do as I thought Christ would do in my
place as a doctor, or frankly abandon it. That could only have one issue
while I still lived with a mother like mine. For she had always been my
ideal of unselfish love. Later, I went down to hear the brothers J. E.
and C. T. Studd speak at some subsidiary meeting of the Moody campaign.
They were natural athletes, and I felt that I could listen to them. I
could not have listened to a sensuous-looking man, a man who was not a
master of his own body, any more than I could to the precentor who,
coming to sing the prayers at college chapel dedication, I saw get drunk
on sherry which he abstracted from the banquet table just before the
service. Never shall I forget, at the meeting of the Studd brothers, the
audience being asked to stand up if they intended to try to follow
Christ. It appeared a very sensible question to me, but I was amazed how
hard I found it to stand up. At last one boy, out of a hundred or more
in sailor rig, from an industrial or reformatory ship on the Thames,
suddenly rose. It seemed to me such a wonderfully courageous act—for I
knew perfectly what it would mean to him—that I immediately found
myself on my feet, and went out feeling that I had crossed the Rubicon,
and must do something to prove it.
We were Church of England people, and I always attended service with my
mother at an Episcopal church of the evangelical type. At her suggestion
I asked the clergyman if I could in any way help. He offered me a class
of small boys in his Sunday School, which I accepted with much
hesitation. The boys, derived from houses in the neighbourhood, were as
smart as any I have known. With every faculty sharpened by the
competition of the street, they so tried my patience with their pranks
that I often wondered what strange attraction induced them to come at
all. The school and church were the property of a society known by the
uninviting title of the 'Episcopal Society for the Promotion of
Christianity among the Jews.' It owned a large court, shut off from the
road by high gates, around which stood about a dozen houses—with the
church facing the gates at one end of a pretty avenue of trees. It was
an oasis in the desert of that dismal region.
One instance of a baptism I have never forgotten. I was then living in
the court, having hired a separate house under the trees after my father
had died and my mother had moved to Hampstead. In such a district the
house was a godsend. One Sunday I was strolling in the court when the
clergyman came rushing out of the church and called to me in great
excitement, 'The Church is full of Jews. They are going to carry off
Abraham. Can't you go in and help while I fetch the police?' My friend
and I, therefore, rushed in as directed to a narrow alleyway between
high box pews which led into the vestry, into which 'Abraham' had been
spirited. The door being shut and our backs put to it, it was a very
easy matter to hold back the crowd, who probably supposed at first that
we were leading the abduction party. There being only room for two to
come on at once, 'those behind cried Forward, and those in front, Back,'
till after very little blood spilt, we heard the police in the church,
whereupon the crowd at once took to flight. I regret to say that we
expedited the rear-guard by football, rather than strictly Christian,
methods. His friends then charged Abraham with theft, expecting to get
him out of his place of refuge and then trap him, as we were told they
had a previous convert. We therefore accompanied him personally through
the mean streets, both to and fro, spoiling for more fun. But they
displayed more discretion than valour, and to the best of my belief he
escaped their machinations.
My Sunday-School efforts did not satisfy me. The boys were few, and I
failed to see any progress. I joined a young Australian of my class in
hospital in holding services on Sunday nights in half a dozen of the
underground lodging-houses along the Ratcliff Highway. He was a good
musician, so he purchased a fine little portable harmonium, and whatever
else the lodgers thought of us, they always liked the music. We used to
meet for evening tea at a place in the famous Highway known as The
Stranger's Rest, outside of which an open-air service was always held
for the sailors wandering up and down the docks. At these a few ladies
would sing; and after the meetings a certain number of the sailors were
asked to come in and have refreshments. There were always some who had
spent their money on drink, or been robbed, or were out of ships, and
many of them were very fine men.
A single story will illustrate the good points which some of these men
displayed. My hospital chief, Sir Frederick Treves, had operated on a
big Norwegian, and the man had left the hospital cured. As a rule such
patients do not even know the name of their surgeon. Some three weeks
later, however, this man called at Sir Frederick Treves's house late one
dark night. Having asked if he were the surgeon who had operated on him
and getting a reply in the affirmative, he said he had come to return
thanks, that since he left hospital he had been wandering about without
a penny to his name, waiting for a ship, but had secured a place on that
day. He proceeded to cut out from the upper edge of his trousers a gold
Norwegian five-kronen piece which his wife had sewed in there to be his
standby in case of absolute need. He had been so hungry that he had been
tempted to use it, but now had come to present it as a token of
gratitude—upon which he bowed and disappeared.
The underground lodging-house work did me lots of good. It brought me
into touch with real poverty—a very graveyard of life I had never
surmised. The denizens of those miserable haunts were men from almost
every rank of life. They were shipwrecks from the ocean of humanity,
drifted up on the last beach. There were large open fireplaces in the
dens, over which those who had any food cooked it. Often, while the
other doctor or I was holding services, the other would have to sit down
on some drunken man to keep him from making the proceedings impossible;
but there were always some who gathered around and really enjoyed the
singing.
There was always a narrow passage from the front door to the staircase
which led down into those huge underground basements. The guardians had
a room inside the door, with a ticket window, where they took tuppence
or possibly fourpence from the boarders for their night's lodging. At
about eleven o'clock a 'chucker-out' would go down and clear out all the
'gentlemen' who had not paid in advance for the night. This was always a
very melancholy period of the evening, and in spite of our hardened
hearts, we always had a score against us there. That, however, had to be
given in person, for there were plenty among our audiences who had taken
special courses in imitative calligraphy. I.O.U.'s on odd bits of paper
were a menace to our banking accounts till we sorrowfully abandoned that
convenient way of helping often a really deserving case.
In those houses, somewhat to my astonishment, we never once received any
physical opposition. Some considered us harmless and gullible imbeciles;
but the great majority were still able to see that it was an attempt,
however poor, to help them. Drink, of course, was the chief cause of the
downfall of most; but, as I have already said, there were cases of
genuine, undeserved poverty—like our sailor friend overtaken with
sickness in a foreign port.
One poor creature, in the last stage of poverty and dirt, proved to be
an honours man of Oxford. We looked up his record at the University. He
assured us that he intended to begin again a new life, and we agreed to
help. We took him to a respectable temperance lodging-house, paid for a
bed, a bath, and a supper, and purchased a good second-hand outfit of
clothing for him. We were wise enough only to give this to him after we
had taken away his own while he was having a bath in the tub. We did not
give him a penny of money, fearing his lack of control. Next morning,
however, when we went for him, he was gone—no one knew where. We had
the neighbouring saloons searched, and soon got track of him. Some
'friend' in the temperance house had given him sixpence. A barman
offered him whiskey, his hands trembled so that he could not lift the
glass to his mouth, and the barman kindly poured it down his throat. We
never saw him again.
My growing experience had shown me that there was a better way to the
hearts of my Sunday-School boys than merely talking to them. Like
myself, they worshipped the athlete, whether he were a prize-fighter or
a big football player. There were no Y.M.C.A.'s or other places for them
to get any physical culture, so we arranged to clear our dining-room
every Saturday evening, and give boxing lessons and clubs and
parallel-bar work—the ceiling was too low for the horizontal. The
transformation of the room was easily accomplished. The furniture was
very primitive, largely our own construction, and we could throw out
through the window every scrap of it except the table, which was soon
adapted. We also put up a quoit pitch in our garden.
This is no place to discuss the spiritual influences of 'the noble art
of boxing.' Personally I have always believed in its value; and my
Sunday-School class soon learned the graces of fair play, how to take
defeat and to be generous in victory. They began at once bringing pals
whom my exegesis of Scripture would never have lured within my reach. We
ourselves began to look forward to Saturday night and Sunday afternoon
with an entirely new joy. We all learned to respect and so to love one
another more—indeed, lifelong friendships were developed and that
irrespective of our hereditary affiliations. The well-meaning clergyman,
however, could not see the situation in that light, and, declining all
invitations to come and sample an evening's fun instead of condemning it
unheard, or I should say unseen, he delivered an ultimatum which I
accepted—and resigned from his school.
My Australian friend was at that time wrestling with a real ragged
school on the Highway on Sunday afternoons. The poor children there were
street waifs and as wild as untamed animals. So, being temporarily out
of a Sunday job, I consented to join him.
Our schoolroom this time owed no allegiance to anyone but ourselves. If
the boys were allowed in a minute before there was a force to cope with
them, the room would be wrecked. Everything movable was stolen instantly
opportunity arose. Boys turned out or locked out during session would
climb to the windows and triumphantly wave stolen articles. On one
occasion, when I had chucked out a specially obstreperous youth, I was
met with a shower of mud and stones as I passed through a narrow alley
on my return home. The police were always at war with the boys, who
annoyed them in similar and many other ways. I remember two scholars
whose eyes were blacked and badly beaten by a 'cop' who happened to
catch them in our doorway, as they declared, 'only waiting for Sunday
School to open.'
With the night work at the lodging-houses, we used to combine a very
aggressive total abstinence campaign. The saloon-keepers as a rule
looked upon us as harmless cranks, and I have no doubt were grateful for
the leaflets we used to distribute to their customers. These served
admirably for kindling purposes. At times, however, they got ugly, and
once my friend, who was in a saloon talking to a customer, was trapped
and whiskey poured into his mouth. On another occasion I noticed that
the outer doors were shut and a couple of men backed up against them
while I was talking to the bar-tender over the counter, and that a few
other customers were closing in to repeat the same experiment on me.
However, they greatly overrated their stock of fitness and equally
underrated my good training, for the scrimmage went all my way in a very
short time.
If I told my football chums (for in those days I was playing hard) of
these adventures in a nether world, they invariably wanted to come and
co-operate; but I have always felt that reliance on physical strength
alone is only like war—an insurance of failure. Only unselfish love can
win in the end. At this time also at Saint Andrew's Church, just across
the Whitechapel Road from the hospital, the clergyman was a fine athlete
and good boxer. He was a brother of Lord Wenlock, and was one night
returning from a service in the Highway when he was set upon by footpads
and robbed of everything, including the boots off his feet. Meanwhile,
Jack the Ripper was also giving our residential section a most unsavoury
reputation.
My long vacations at this time were taken on the sea. My brother and I
used to hire an old fishing smack called the _Oyster_, which we
rechristened the _Roysterer_. This we fitted out, provisioned, and in
her put to sea with an entirely untrained crew, and without even the
convention of caring where we were bound so long as the winds bore us
cheerily along. My brother was generally cook—and never was there a
better. We believe still that he would have made a mark in the world as
a chef, from his ability to satisfy our appetites and cater to our
desires out of so ill-supplied a galley. We always took our departure
from Anglesea. We carried our fishing gear with us, and thus never
wanted for fresh food. We could replenish our bread, milk, butter, and
egg supply at the numerous small ports at which we called. The first
year the crew consisted of my brother and me—skipper, mate, and cook
between us—and an Oxford boating friend as second mate. For a deckhand
we had a young East London parson, whom we always knew as 'the Puffin'
because he so closely resembled that particular bird when he had his
vestments on. We sailed first for Ireland, but the wind coming ahead we
ran instead for the Isle of Man. The first night at sea the very tall
undergraduate as second mate took the 12 P.M. to 4 A.M. night watch. The
tiller handle was low, and when I gave him his course at midnight before
turning in myself, he asked me if it would be a breach of nautical
etiquette to sit down to steer, as that was the only alternative to
directing the ship's course with his ankles. No land was in sight and
the wind had died out when I came on deck for my 4 A.M. to 8 A.M. watch.
I found the second mate sitting up rubbing his eyes as I emerged from
the companion hatch.
'Well, where are we now? How is her head? What's my course?'
'Don't worry about such commonplace details,' he replied. 'I have made
an original discovery about these parts that I have never seen mentioned
before.'
'What's that?' I asked innocently.
'Well,' he replied, 'when I sat down to steer, the course you gave
brought a bright star right over the topmast head and that's what I
started to steer by. It's a perfect marvel what a game these heavenly
bodies play. I just shut my eyes for a second and when next I opened
them the sun was exactly where I had left that star'—and he fled for
shelter.
It is a wonder that we ever got anywhere, for we had not so much as a
chronometer watch, and in spite of a decrepit sextant even our latitude
was often an uncertain quantity. However, we made the port of Douglas,
whence we visited quite a part of the historic island. As our parson was
called home from there, we wired for and secured another chum to share
our labours. Our generally unconventional attire in fashionable summer
resorts was at times quite embarrassing. Barelegged, bareheaded, and
'tanned to a chip,' I was carrying my friend's bag along the fashionable
pier to see him off on his homeward journey, when a lady stopped me and
asked me if I were an Eskimo, offering me a job if I needed one. I
suppose the job was in a side-show.
We spent that holiday cruising around the island. It included running
ashore off the north point of land and nearly losing the craft; and also
in Ramsey Harbour a fracas with the harbour authorities. We had run in
that night on top of the full spring tide. Not knowing the harbour, we
had tied up to the first bollard and gone incontinently to sleep. We
were awakened by the sound of water thundering on top of us, and rushing
up found to our dismay that we were lying in the mud, and a large sewer
was discharging right on to our decks. Before we had time to get away or
clean up, the harbour-master, coming alongside, called on us to pay
harbour dues! We stoutly protested that as a pleasure yacht we were not
liable and intended to resist to the death any such insult. He was
really able to see at once that we were just young fellows out for a
holiday, but he had the last word before a crowd of sight-seers who had
gathered on the quay above us.
'Pleasure yacht, pleasure yacht, indeed!' he shouted as he rode away. 'I
can prove to any man with half an eye that you are nothing but one of
them old coal or mud barges.'
The following year the wind suited better the other way. We were
practically all young doctors this time, the cook being a very athletic
chum in whose rooms were collected as trophies, in almost every branch
of athletics, over seventy of what we called silver 'pots.' As a cook he
proved a failure except in zeal. It didn't really interest him,
especially when the weather was lively. On one occasion I reported to
the galley, though I was skipper that year, in search of the
rice-pudding for dinner—Dennis, our cook, being temporarily indisposed.
Such a sight as met my view! Had I been superstitious I should have
fled. A great black column the circumference of the boiler had risen not
less than a foot above the top rim, and was wearing the iron cover
jauntily on one side as a helmet. It proved to be rice. He had filled
the saucepan with dry rice, crowded in a little water, forced the lid on
very tight, and left it to its own devices!
We visited Carnarvon, Harlech, and other castles, lost our boat in a
breeze of wind off Dynllyn, climbed Snowdon from Pwllheli Harbour, and
visited a dozen little out-of-the-world harbours that one would
otherwise never see. Fishing and shooting for the pot, bathing and
rowing, and every kind of healthy out-of-doors pleasure was indulged in
along the road of travel—and all at no cost.
At one little seaport a very small man not over five feet high had
married a woman considerably over six. He was an idle, drunken rascal,
and I met her one day striding down the street with her intoxicated
little spouse wrapped up in her apron, feebly protesting.
One result of these holidays was that I told my London boys about them,
using one's experiences as illustrations, till suddenly it struck me
that this was shabby Christianity. Why shouldn't these town cagelings
share our holidays? Thirteen accompanied me the following summer. We had
three tents, an old deserted factory, and an uninhabited gorge by the
sea, all to ourselves on the Anglesea coast, among people who spoke only
Welsh. Thus we had all the joys of foreign travel at very little cost.
Among the many tricks the boys 'got away with' was one at the big
railway junction at Bangor, where we had an hour to wait. They got into
the baggage-room and stole a varied assortment of labels, which they
industriously pasted over those on a large pile of luggage stacked on
the platform. The subsequent tangle of destinations can better be
imagined than described. I have never put much value on 'labels' since
that day.
Camp rules were simple—no clothing allowed except short blue knickers
and grey flannel shirts, no shoes, stockings, or caps except on Sundays.
The uniform was provided and was as a rule the amateur production of
numerous friends, for our finances were strictly limited. The knickers
were not particularly successful, the legs frequently being carried so
high up that there was no space into which the body could be inserted.
Everyone had to bathe in the sea before he got any breakfast. I can
still see ravenous boys staving off the evil hour till as near midday as
possible. No one was allowed in the boats who could not swim, an art
which they all quickly acquired. There was, of course, a regular fatigue
party each day for the household duties. We had no beds, but slept on
long burlap bags stuffed with hay. A very favourite pastime was afforded
by our big lifeboat, an old one hired from the National Lifeboat
Society. The tides flowed very strongly alongshore, east on the flood
tide and west on the ebb. Food, fishing-lines, and a skipper for the day
being provided, the old boat would go off with the tide in the morning,
the boys had a picnic somewhere during the slack-water interim, and came
back with the return tide.
When our numbers grew, as they did to thirty the second year, and nearly
a hundred in subsequent seasons, thirty or more boys would be packed off
daily in that way, and yet we never lost one of them. If they had not
had as many lives as cats, it would have been quite another story. The
boat had sufficient sails to give the appearance to their unfamiliar
eyes of being a sailing vessel, but the real work was done with twelve
huge oars, two boys to an oar being the rule. At nights they used to
come drifting homeward on the returning tides singing their dirges, like
some historic barge of old.
An annual expedition was to the top of Mount Snowdon, the highest in
England or Wales. It was attempted by land and water. Half of us tramped
overland in forced marches to the beautiful Menai Straits, crossed the
suspension bridge, and were given splendid hospitality and good beds on
the straw of the large stables at the beautiful country seat of a friend
at Trevorth. Here the boat section who came around the island were to
meet us, anchoring their craft on the south side of the Straits. Our
second year the naval division did not turn up, and some had qualms of
conscience that evil might have overtaken them. Nor did they arrive
until we by land had conquered the summit, travelling by Bethesda and
the famous slate quarries, and returning for the second evening to
Trevorth. We then found that they had been stranded on the sands in Red
Wharf Bay, so far from the shore that they could neither go forward nor
back; had thus spent their first night in a somewhat chilly manner in
old bathing-machines by the land-wash, and supped off the superfluous
hard biscuit which they had been reserving for the return voyage. They
were none the worse, however, our genial host making it up to them in an
extra generous provision and a special evening entertainment. One of my
smartest boys (a Jew by nationality, for we made no distinctions in
election to our class), in recounting his adventures to me next day,
said: 'My! Doctor, I did have some fun kidding that waiter in the white
choker. He took a liking to me, so I let him pal up. I told him my name
was Lord Shaftesbury when I was home, but I asked him not to let it out,
and the old bloke promised he wouldn't.' The 'old bloke' happened to be
our host, who was always in dress-clothes in the evening, which was the
only time we were at his house.
These holidays drew us very closely together; and to make the boys feel
it less a charitable affair, everyone was encouraged to save up his
railway fare and as much more as possible. By special arrangement with
the railway and other friends, and by very simple living, the _per
capita_ charges were so much reduced that many of the boys not only paid
their own expenses, but even helped their friends. The start was always
attended by a crowd of relatives, all helping with the baggage. The
father of one of my boys was a costermonger, and had a horse that he had
obtained very cheap because it had a disease of the legs. He always kept
it in the downstairs portion of his house, which it entered by the front
door. It was a great pleasure to him to come and cart our things free to
the station. The boys used to load his cart at our house, and I remember
one time that they made him haul unconsciously all the way to the big
London terminal at Euston half our furniture, including our coal boxes.
His son, a most charming boy, made good in life in Australia and bought
a nice house in one of the suburbs for his father and mother. I had the
pleasure one night of meeting them all there. The father was terribly
uneasy, for he said he just could not get accustomed to it. All his old
pals were gone, and his present neighbours' tastes and interests made a
great gulf between them. I heard later that, as soon as his son left
England again, the old man sold the house, and returned to the more
congenial associations of a costermonger's life, where I believe he,
like his pony, died in harness.
The last two years of my stay in London being occupied with resident
work at hospital, I could not find time for such far-off holidays, and
at the suggestion of my chief, Sir Frederick Treves, himself a
Dorsetshire man, we camped by permission of our friends, the owners, in
the grounds of Lulworth Castle, close by the sea.
One of the great attractions of the new camping-ground was the exquisite
country and the splendid coast, with chalk cliffs over which almost
anyone could fall with impunity. Lulworth Cove, one of the most
picturesque in England, was the summer resort of my chief, and he being
an expert mariner and swimmer used not only very often to join us at
camp, but always gave the boys a fine regatta and picnic at his cottage.
Our water polo games were also a great feature here, the water being
warm and enabling us easily to play out the games. There are also
numerous beautiful castles and country houses all the way between
Swanage and Weymouth, and we had such kindness extended to us wherever
we went that every day was a dream of joy to the lads. Without any
question they acquired new visions and ideals through these experiences.
CHAPTER IV
'THE LONDON'
HAVING finished my second year at hospital and taken my preliminary
examinations, including the scientific preliminary, and my first
Bachelor of Medicine for the University of London degree, I had advanced
to the dignity of 'walking the hospitals,' carried a large shining
stethoscope, and spent much time following the famous physicians and
surgeons around the wards.
Our first appointment was clerking in the medical wards. We had each so
many beds allotted to us, and it was our business to know everything
about the patients who occupied them, to keep accurate 'histories,' and
to be ready to be quizzed or queried by our resident house physician or
our visiting consultant on the afternoon when he made his rounds,
followed by larger or smaller crowds of students according to the value
which was placed upon his teaching. I was lucky enough to work under the
famous Sir Andrew Clark, Mr. Gladstone's physician. He was a Scotchman
greatly beloved, and always with a huge following, to whom he imparted
far more valuable truths than even the medical science of those days
afforded. His constant message, repeated and repeated at the risk of
wearying, was: 'Gentlemen, you must observe for yourselves. It is your
observation and not your memory which counts.'
Compared with the methods of diagnosis to-day, those of that day were
very limited, but Sir Andrew's message was the more important, showing
the greatness of the man, who, though at the very top of the tree, never
for a moment tried to convey to his followers that his knowledge was
final, but that any moment he stood ready to abandon his position for a
better one. On one occasion, while he was in one of the largest of our
wards (one with four divisions and twenty beds each), he was examining a
lung case, while a huge class of fifty young doctors stood around.
'What about the sputum, Mr. Jones?' he asked. 'What have you observed
coming from these lungs?'
'There is not much quantity, sir. It is greenish in colour.'
'But what about the microscope, Mr. Jones? What does that show?'
'No examination has been made, sir.'
'Gentlemen,' he said, 'I will now go to the other ward, and you shall
choose a specimen of the sputum of some of these cases. When I return,
we will examine it and see what we can learn.'
When he returned, four specimens awaited him, the history and diagnosis
of the cases being known only to the class. The class never forgot how,
by dissolving and boiling, and with the microscope, he told us more from
his examination of each case than we knew from all our other
information. His was real teaching, and reminds one of the Glasgow
professor who, in order to emphasize the same point of the value of
observation, prepared a little cupful of kerosene, mustard, and castor
oil, and, calling the attention of his class to it, dipped a finger into
the atrocious compound and then sucked his finger. He next passed the
mixture around to the students who all did the same with most dire
results. When the cup returned and he observed the faces of his
students, he remarked: 'Gentlemen, I am afraid you did not use your
powers of obsairvation. The finger that I put into the cup was no' the
same one that I stuck in my mouth.'
On changing over to the surgical side in the hospital, we were employed
in a very similar manner, only we were called 'dressers,' and under the
house surgeon had all the care of a number of surgical patients. My good
fortune now brought me under the chieftaincy of Sir Frederick Treves,
the doyen of teachers. His great message was self-reliance. He taught
dogmatically as one having authority, and always insisted that we should
make up our minds, have a clear idea of what we were doing, and then do
it. His ritual was always thought out, no detail being omitted, and each
person had exactly his share of work and his share of responsibility. It
used greatly to impress patients, and he never underestimated the
psychical value of having their complete confidence. Thus, on one
occasion asking a dresser for his diagnosis, the student replied:
'It might be a fracture, sir, or it might be only sprained.'
'The patient is not interested to know that it might be measles, or it
might be toothache. The patient wants to know what is the matter, and it
is your business to tell it to him or he will go to a quack who will
inform him at once.'
All his teachings were, like Mark Twain's, enhanced by such
over-emphasis or, like Christ's own, by hyperbole. He could make an
article in the _British Medical Journal_ on Cholecystenterostomy amusing
to a general reader, and make an ordinary remark as cutting as an
amputation knife. He never permitted laxity of any kind in personal
appearance or dress, or any imposing on the patients. His habit of
saying openly exactly what he meant made many people fear as much as
they respected him.
One incident recurs to my mind which I must recount as an example when
psychology failed. A Whitechapel 'lady,' suffering with a violent form
of delirium tremens, was lying screeching in a strait-jacket on the
cushioned floor of the padded room. With the usual huge queue of
students following, he had gone in to see her, as I had been unable to
get the results desired with a reasonable quantity of sedatives and
soporifics. It was a very rare occasion, for cases which did not involve
active surgery he left strictly alone. After giving a talk on psychical
influence, he had the jacket removed as 'a relic of barbarism,' and in a
very impressive manner, looking into her glaring eyes and shaking his
forefinger at her, he said: 'Now you are comfortable, my good woman, and
you will sleep. You will make no more disturbance whatever.' There was
an unusual silence. The woman remained absolutely passive, and we all
turned to follow the chief out. Suddenly the 'lady' called out, 'Hi,
hi'—and some perverse spirit induced Sir Frederick to return. Looking
back with defiant eyes she screamed out, 'You! You with a faice! You do
think yerself ———— clever, don't yer?' The situation was promptly
relieved by his bursting into a genuine fit of laughter.
Among other celebrated men who were admired and revered was Mr. Hurry
Fenwick on the surgical side, for whom I had the honour of illustrating
in colours his prize Jacksonian essay. Any talent for sketching,
especially in colours, is of great value to the student of medicine.
Once you have sketched a case from Nature, with the object of showing
the peculiarity of the abnormality, it remains permanently in your mind.
Besides this, it forces you to note small differences; in other words,
it teaches you to 'obsairve.' Thus, in the skin department I was sent to
reproduce a case of anthrax of the neck, a rare disease in England,
though all men handling raw hides are liable to contract it. The area
had to be immediately excised; yet one never could forget the picture on
one's mind. On another occasion a case of genuine leprosy was brought
in, with all the dreadful signs of the disease. The macula rash was
entirely unique so far as I knew, but a sketch greatly helped to fix it
on one's memory. The poor patient proved to be one of the men who was
handling the meat in London's greatest market at Smithfield. A
tremendous hue and cry spread over London when somehow the news got into
the paper, and vegetarianism received a temporary boost which in my
opinion it still badly needs for the benefit of the popular welfare.
Truly one has lived through wonderful days in the history of the healing
art. The first operations which I saw performed at our hospitals were
before Lord Lister's teaching was practised; though even in my boyhood I
remember getting leave to run up from Marlborough to London to see my
brother, on whom Sir Joseph Lister had operated for osteomyelitis of the
leg. Our most famous surgeon in 1880 was Sir Walter Rivington; and
to-day there arises to memory the picture of him, clad in a
blood-stained, black velvet coat, and, without any attempt at or idea of
asepsis, removing a leg at the thigh. The main thing was speed, although
the patient was under ether, and in quickly turning round the tip of the
sword-like amputation knife, he made a gash in the patient's other leg.
The whole thing seemed horrible enough to us students, but the surgeon
smiled, saying, 'Fortunately it is of no importance, gentlemen. The man
will not live.' Amputations practically always went septic then.
Then came the day when everyone worked under clouds of carbolic steam,
which fizzed and spouted from large brass boilers over everything; and
then the time when everyone was criticizing the new young surgeon,
Treves, who was daring to discard it, and getting as good results by
scrupulous cleanliness. His aphorism was, 'Gentlemen, the secret of
surgery is the nailbrush.' To-day, with blood examinations, germ
cultures, sera tests, X-rays, and a hundred added improvements, one can
say to a fisherman in far-off Labrador arriving on a mail steamer, and
to whom every hour lost in the fishing season spells calamity, 'Yes, you
can be operated on, and the wound will be healed, and you will be ready
to go back by the next steamer, unless some utterly unforeseen
circumstance arises.'
[Illustration: A LONELY SETTLER]
[Illustration: A LABRADOR FISHERMAN'S HOME]
A little later my father's health began to fail in London, the worries
and troubles of a sensitive clergyman's work among the poor creatures
who were constantly passing under his care utterly overwhelming him. We
agreed that a complete change of thought was necessary, and he and I
started for a fishing and sight-seeing tour in Norway. Our steamer was
to sail from the Tyne, and we went up to Newcastle to catch it. There
some evil fiend persuaded my father to go and consult a doctor about his
illness. Thus, while I waited at the hotel, my father became persuaded
that he had some occult disease of the liver and must remain in
Newcastle for treatment. However, I happened to be treasurer of the
voyage, and for the first time asserting my professional powers,
insisted that I was family physician for the time, and turned up in the
evening with all our round-trip tickets and reservations taken and paid
for. In the morning I had the trunks packed and conveyed aboard, and we
sailed together for one of the most enjoyable holidays I ever spent. We
travelled much afoot and in the little native carriages called
_stolkjaerre_, just jogging along, staying anywhere, fishing in streams,
and living an open-air life, which the increasing flood of tourists in
after years has made much less possible.
My father's death a year later made a great difference to me, my mother
removing to live with my grandmother at Hampstead, as it was too lonely
and not safe for her to live alone in East London. Twice our house had
been broken into by burglars. The second occasion was in open daylight
during the hour of evening service on a Sunday. Only the maids would
have been in the house had I not been suffering from two black eyes
contracted during the Saturday's football game. Though I had accompanied
the others out, I had decided that my appearance might have led to
misinterpretations in church, and returned unnoticed. The men escaped by
some method which they had discovered of scaling a high fence, but I was
close behind following them through the window by which they had
entered. Shortly afterward I happened to be giving evidence at the Old
Bailey on one of the many cases of assault and even murder where the
victims had been brought into hospital as patients. London was ringing
with the tale of a barefaced murder at Murray Hill in North London,
where an exceedingly clever piece of detective work, an old lantern
discovered in a pawnbroker's shop in Whitechapel—miles away from the
scene of the crime—was the means of bringing to trial four of the most
rascally-looking villains I ever saw. The trial preceded ours, and we
had to witness it. One of the gang had turned Queen's evidence to save
his own neck. So great was the hatred of the others for him and the
desire for revenge that even in the court they were handcuffed and in
separate stands. Fresh from my own little fracas, I learned what a fool
I had been, for in this case also the deed was done in open daylight and
the lawn had tight wires stretched across it. The young son, giving
chase as I did, had been tripped up and shot through the abdomen for his
pains. He had, however, crawled back, made his will, and was
subsequently only saved by a big operation.
The giving of expert evidence on such occasions was the only opportunity
which the young sawbones had of earning money. True, we got only a
guinea a day and expenses while thus in court, but we learned a lot
about medical jurisprudence, a subject which always greatly interested
me. It was no uncommon sight either at 'The London,' or 'Poplar,' at
both of which I did interne work, to see a policeman always sitting
behind the screen at the foot of the patient's bed. One man, quite a
nice fellow when not occupied in crime, when furiously drunk had killed
his wife and cut his own throat. By the curious custom of civilization
all the skill and money which the hospital could offer to save a most
valuable life was as usual devoted to restoring this man to health. He
was weaned slowly back from the grave by special nurses and treatment,
till it began to dawn upon him that he might have to stand his trial. He
would ask me if I thought he would have to undergo a long term, for he
had not been conscious of what he was doing. As he grew better, and the
policeman arrived to watch him, he decided that it would probably be
quite a long time. He had a little place of his own somewhere, and he
used to have chickens and other presents sent up to fellow-patients, and
would have done so to the nurses, only they could not receive them. I
was not personally present at his trial, but I felt really sorry to hear
that they hanged him.
Many of these poor fellows were only prevented from ending their own
lives by our using extreme care. The case of one wretched man, driven to
desperation, I still remember. 'Patient male; age forty-five; domestic
trouble—fired revolver into his mouth. Finding no phenomena of interest
develop, fired a second chamber into his right ear. Still no symptoms
worthy of notice. Patient threw away pistol and walked to hospital.'
Both bullets had lodged in the thick parts of his skull, and, doing no
damage, were left there. A subsequent note read: 'Patient to-day tried
to cut his throat with a dinner-knife which he had hidden in his bed.
Patient met with no success.'
Another of my cases which interested me considerably was that of a
professional burglar who had been operated upon in almost every part of
the kingdom, and was inclined to be communicative, as the job which had
brought him to hospital had cost him a broken spine. Very little hope
was held out to him that he would ever walk again. He was clear of
murder, for he said it was never his practice to carry firearms, being a
nervous man and apt to use them if he had them and got alarmed when busy
burglaring. He relied chiefly on his extraordinary agility and steady
head to escape. He and a friend had been detailed by the gang to the job
of plundering one of a row of houses. The plans of the house and of the
enterprise were all in order, but some unexpected alarm was given and he
fled upstairs, climbed through a skylight on to the roof, and ran along
the gables of the tiles, not far ahead of the police, who were armed and
firing at him. He could easily have escaped, as he could run along the
coping of the brick parapet without turning a hair, but he was brought
up by a narrow side street on which he had not counted, not having
anticipated, like cats, a battle on the tiles. It was only some twelve
to fifteen feet across the gap, and the landing on the other side was a
flat roof. Taking it all at a rush he cleared the street successfully,
but the flat roof, black with ages of soot, proved to be a glass
skylight, and he entered a house in a way new even to him. His falling
on a stone floor many feet below accounted for what he characterized
'his unfortunate accident'! After many months in bed, the man took an
unexpected turn, his back mended, and with only a slight leg paralysis
he was able to return to the outside world. His long suffering and
incarceration in hospital were accepted by the law as his punishment,
and he assured me by all that he held sacred that he intended to retire
into private life. Oddly enough, however, while on another case, I saw
him again in the prisoner's dock and at once went over and spoke to him.
'Drink this time, Doctor,' he said. 'I was down on my luck and the
bar-keeper went out and left his till open. I climbed over and got the
cash, but there was so little space between the bar and the wall that
with my stiff back I couldn't for the life of me get back. I was jammed
like a stopper in a bottle.'
Among many interesting experiences, one especially I shall never forget.
Like the others, it occurred during my service for Sir Frederick Treves
as house surgeon, and I believe he told the story. A very badly burned
woman had been brought into hospital. Her dress had somehow got soaked
in paraffin and had then taken fire. Her terribly extensive burns left
no hope whatever of her recovery, and only the conventions of society
kept us from giving the poor creature the relief of euthanasia, by some
cup of laudanum negus. But the law was interested. A magistrate was
brought to the bedside and the husband sent for. The nature of the
evidence, the meaning of an oath, the importance of the poor creature
acknowledging that her words were spoken 'in hopeless fear of immediate
death,' were all duly impressed upon what remained of her mind. The
police then brought in the savage, degraded-looking husband, and made
him stand between two policemen at the foot of the bed, facing his
mangled wife. The magistrate, after preliminary questions, asked her to
make her dying statement as to how she came by her death. There was a
terrible moment of silence. It seemed as if her spirit were no longer
able to respond to the stimuli of life on earth. Then a sudden rebound
appeared to take place, her eyes lit up with a flash of light, and even
endeavouring to raise her piteous body, she said, 'It was an accident,
Judge. I upset the lamp myself, so help me God': and just for one moment
her eyes met those of her miserable husband. It was the last time she
spoke.
Tragedy and comedy ran hand in hand even in this work. Saint Patrick's
Day always made the hospital busy, just as Christmas was the season for
burned children. Beer in an East London 'pub' was generally served in
pewter pots, as they were not easily broken. A common head injury was a
circular scalp cut made by the heavy bottom rim, a wound which bled
horribly. A woman was brought in on one Saint Patrick's Day, her scalp
turned forward over her face and her long hair a mass of clotted blood
from such a stroke, made while she was on the ground. When the necessary
readjustments had been made and she was leaving hospital cured, we asked
her what had been the cause of the trouble. ''Twas just an accidint, yer
know. Sure, me an' another loidy was just havin' a few words.'
On another occasion late at night, we were called out of bed by a
cantankerous, half-drunken fellow whom the night porter could not
pacify. 'I'm a regular subscriber to this hospital, and I have never had
my dues yet,' he kept protesting. A new drug to produce immediate
vomiting had just been put on the market, and, as it was exactly the
treatment required, we gave him an injection. To our dismay, though the
medicine is in common use to-day, either the poison which he had been
drinking or the drug itself caused a collapse followed by head symptoms.
He was admitted, his head shaved and ice-bags applied, with the result
that next day he was quite well again. But when he left, he had, instead
of a superabundance of curly auburn hair, a polished white knob oiled
and shining like a State House at night. We debated whether his
subscription would be as regular in future, though he professed to be
profoundly grateful.
The intimacy which grew up between some of my patients and myself showed
me (which I never could otherwise have understood) the seamy side of
life in great cities, its terrible tragedies and pathos, and how much
good there is in the worst, how much need of courage, and what vast
opportunities lie before those who accept the service of man as their
service to God. It proved to me how infinitely more needed are unselfish
deeds than orthodox words.
* * * * *
My parents having gone, it became necessary for me to find
lodgings—which I did, 'unfurnished,' in the house of a Portuguese
widow. Her husband, who had a good family name, had gone down in the
world and had disappeared with another 'lady.' The eldest son, a
mathematical genius, had been able to pay his way through Cambridge
University by the scholarships and prizes which he had won. One
beautiful little dark-eyed daughter of seven was playing in a West End
theatre as the dormouse in _Alice in Wonderland_. She was second fiddle
to Alice herself, also, and could sing all her songs. Her pay was five
pounds a week, poor enough for the attraction she proved, but more than
all that of the rest of the family put together. The 'dormouse' used to
come up and say her parts for my benefit and that of occasional friends,
and was so modest and winsome, and her earnings so invaluable to the
family, that then and there I came to the conclusion that the drama was
an essential part of art, and that those who were trying to elevate and
cleanse it, like Sir Henry Irving, whose son I had met at Marlborough,
must have the support of a public who demanded clean plays and good
conditions both in front and behind the curtain.
My new lodgings being close to Victoria Park afforded the opportunity
for training if one were unconventional. To practise throwing the
sixteen-pound hammer requires rough ground and plenty of space, and, as
I was scheduled for that at the inter-hospital sports, it was necessary
to work when not too many disinterested parties were around. Even an
East-Ender's skull is not hammer-proof, as I had seen when a poor woman
was brought into hospital with five circular holes in her head, the
result of blows inflicted by her husband with a hammer. The only excuse
which the ruffian offered for the murder was that she had forgotten to
wake him, he had been late, and lost his job.
A number of the boys in my class were learning to swim. There was only
one bathing-lake and once the 'waters were troubled' we drew the line at
going in to give lessons. So we used to meet at the gate at the hour of
opening in the morning, and thus be going back before most people were
moving. Nor did we always wait for the park keeper, but often scaled the
gates and so obtained an even more exclusive dip. Many an evening we
would also 'flannel,' and train round and round the park, to improve
one's wind before some big event. For diet at that time I used oatmeal,
milk, and eggs, and very little or no meat. It was cheaper and seemed to
give me more endurance. Moreover, the real value of money was dawning on
me.
Victoria Park is one of those open forums where every man with a sore
spot goes out to air his grievance. On Sundays there were little groups
around the trees where orators debated on everything from a patent
medicine to the nature of God. Charles Bradlaugh and Mrs. Annie Besant
were associated together in iconoclastic efforts against orthodox
religion, and there was so much truth in some of their contentions that
they were making no little disturbance. Hanging on their skirts were a
whole crowd of ignorant, dogmatic atheists, who published a paper called
_The Freethinker_, which, while it was a villainous and contemptible
rag, appealed to the passions and prejudices of the partially educated.
To answer the specious arguments of their propaganda an association
known as the Christian Evidence Society used to send out lecturers. One
of them became quite famous for his clever arguments and answers, his
ready wit, and really extensive reading. He was an Antiguan, a black man
named Edwards, and had been a sailor before the mast. I met him at the
parish house of an Episcopal clergyman of a near-by church, who, under
the caption of Christian Socialism, ran all kinds of social agencies
that found their way to the hearts of the people. His messages were so
much more in deeds than in words that he greatly appealed to me, and I
transferred my allegiance to his church, which was always well filled. I
particularly remember among his efforts the weekly parish dance. My
religious acquaintances were apt to class all such simple amusements in
a sort of general category as 'works of the Devil,' and turn deaf ears
to every invitation to point out any evil results, being satisfied with
their own statement that it was the 'thin edge of the wedge.' This good
man, however, was very obviously driving a wedge into the hearts of many
of his poor neighbours who in those days found no opportunity for relief
in innocent pleasures from the sordid round of life in the drab purlieus
of Bethnal Green.
Exactly opposite the hospital was Oxford House, only two minutes
distant, which combined definite doctrinal religion with social work.
Being an Oxford effort it had great attractions for me. Moreover, right
alongside it in the middle of a disused sugar refinery I had hired the
yard, converted in into a couple of lawn-tennis courts, and had run a
small club. There I first met the famous Dr. Hensley Henson, now Bishop
of Durham, and also the present Bishop of London, Dr. Winnington
Ingram—a good all-round athlete. He used to visit in our wards; and as
we had a couple of fives courts, a game which takes little time and
gives much exercise, we used to have an afternoon off together, once a
week, when he came over to hospital. Neither of these splendid men was a
dignitary in those days, or I am afraid they would have found us
medicals much more stand-offish. We liked both of these men because they
were unconventional and good sports, and especially in that they were
not afraid to tackle the atheist's propaganda in the open. I have seen
Dr. Henson in Whitechapel debating alone against a hall full of
opponents and with fairness and infinite restraint. Moreover, I have
seen Dr. Ingram doing just the same thing standing on a stone in the
open park. It may all sound very silly when one knows that by human
minds, or to the human mind, the Infinite can never be demonstrated as a
mathematical proposition. But the point was that these clergy were
proving that they were real men—men who had courage as well as faith,
who believed in their message. Christ Himself showed His superb manhood
by just such speaking out.
Far and away the most popular of the Park speakers was the Antiguan. His
arguments were so clever it was obvious that he was well and widely
read. His absolute understanding of the crowd and his witty repartee
used frequently to cause his opponents to lose their tempers, and that
was always their undoing. The crowd as a rule was very fair and could
easily distinguish arguments from abuse. Thus, on one Sunday the debate
was as to whether Nature was God. The atheist representative was a
loud-voiced demagogue, who when angry betrayed his Hibernian origin very
markedly. Having been completely worsted and the laugh turned against
him, he used the few minutes given him to reply, in violent abuse,
ending up that 'ladies and gentlemen did not come out on holidays to
spend their time being taught English by a damned nigger.'
'Sir,' Edwards answered from the crowd, 'I am a British subject, born on
the island of Antigua, and as much an Englishman as any Irishman in the
country.'
Edwards possessed an inexhaustible stock of good-humour, and his laugh
could be heard half-way across the Park. As soon as his turn came to
mount the stone, he got the crowd so good-natured that they became angry
at the interruptions of the enemy, and when someone suggested that if
Nature were that man's God, the near-by duckpond was the natural place
for him, there was a rush for him, and for several subsequent Sundays he
was not in evidence. Edwards was a poor man, his small salary and
incessant generosity left him nothing for holidays, and he was killing
himself with overwork. So we asked him to join us in the new house which
we were fitting up in Palestine Place. He most gladly did so and added
enormously to our fun. Unfortunately, tuberculosis long ago got its grip
upon him, and removed a valuable life from East London.
It was a queer little beehive in which we lived in those days, and a
more cosmopolitan crowd could hardly have been found: one young doctor
who has since made his name and fortune in Australia; another in whose
rooms were nearly a hundred cups for prowess in almost every form of
athletics, and who has also 'made good' in professional life; besides
several others who for shorter or longer periods were allotted rooms in
our house. Among the more unusual was C. M., a Brahmin from India, a
priest in his youth, who had been brought back to England by some
society to be educated in medical missionary work, but whom for some
reason they had dropped. For a short time a clever young Russian of
Hebrew extraction who was studying for the Church helped to render our
common-room social engagements almost international affairs.
It so happened that there was at that time in hospital under my care a
patient known as 'the Elephant Man.' He had been starring under that
title in a cheap vaudeville, had been seen by some of the students, and
invited over to be shown to and studied by our best physicians, and to
be cared for kindly for the rest of his life. The poor fellow was really
exceedingly sensitive about his most extraordinary appearance. The
disease was called 'leontiasis,' and consisted of an enormous
over-development of bone and skin on one side. His head and face were so
deformed as really to resemble a big animal's head with a trunk. My arms
would not reach around his hat. A special room in a yard was allotted to
him, and several famous people came to see him, among them Queen
Alexandra, then the Princess of Wales, who afterward sent him an
autographed photograph of herself. He kept it in his room, which was
known as the 'Elephant House,' and it always suggested Beauty and the
Beast. Only at night could the man venture out of doors, and it was no
unusual thing in the dusk of nightfall to meet him walking up and down
in the little courtyard. He used to talk freely of how he would look in
a huge bottle of alcohol—an end to which in his imagination he was
fated to come. He was of a very cheerful disposition and pathetically
proud of his left side, which was normal. Very suddenly one day he
died—the reason assigned being that his head fell forward and choked
him, being too heavy for him to lift up.
In 1886 I passed my final examinations and duly became a member of the
College of Physicians and of the Royal College of Surgeons of England;
and sought new fields for change and rest, where also I could use my
newly acquired licence to my own, if to no one else's benefit.
CHAPTER V
OFF THE DOGGER BANK
AMONG the patients who came to the London Hospital, there were now and
again fishermen from the large fishing fleets of the North Sea. They
lived out, as it were, in floating villages, sending their fish to
market every day by fast cutters. Every two or three months, as their
turn came round, a vessel would leave for the home port on the east
coast, being permitted, or supposed to be permitted, a day at home for
each full week at sea. As the fleets kept the sea summer and winter, and
the boats were small, not averaging over sixty tons, it was a hazardous
calling. The North Sea is nowhere deeper than thirty fathoms, much of it
being under twenty, and in some places only five. Indeed, it is a
recently sunken and still sinking portion of Europe, so much so that the
coasts on both sides are constantly receding, and when Heligoland was
handed over by the English to the Kaiser, it was said that he would have
to keep jacking it up, or soon there would be none left. Shallow waters
exposed to the fierce gales which sweep the German Ocean make deep and
dangerous seas, which readily break and wash the decks of craft with low
freeboard, such as the North Sea vessels are obliged to have, in order
to get boats in and out to ferry their fish to the cutter.
There being no skilled aid at hand, the quickest way to get help in
cases of accident used to be to send an injured man to market with the
fish. Often it was a long journey of many days, simple fractures became
compound, and limbs and faculties were often thus lost. It so happened
that Sir Frederick Treves had a love for navigating in small
sailing-craft, and had recently made a trip among the fishing fleets. He
told me that a small body of men, interested in the religious and social
welfare of the deep-sea fishermen, had chartered a small fishing-smack,
and sent her out among the fishermen to hold religious services of a
simple, unconventional type, in order to afford the men an alternative
to the grog vessels when fishing was slack, and to carry first aid, the
skipper of the vessel being taught ambulance work. They wanted, however,
to get a young doctor to go out, who cared also for the spiritual side
of the work. His advice to me was to go and have a look at it. 'If you
go in January, you will see some fine seascapes, anyhow. Don't try it in
summer when all the old ladies go there for a rest.'
I therefore applied to go out the following January; and that fall,
while working near the Great London docks, I used often to look at the
tall East Indiamen, thinking that I soon should be aboard just such a
vessel in the North Sea. It was dark and raining when my train ran into
Yarmouth, and a dripping, stout fisherman in a blue uniform met me at
that then unattractive and ill-lighted terminus. He had brought a
forlorn 'growler' or four-wheel cab. Climbing in we drove a mile or more
along a deserted road, and drew up at last apparently at the back of
beyond.
'Where is the ship?' I asked.
'Why, those are her topmasts,' replied my guide, pointing to two posts
projecting from the sand. 'The tide is low and she is hidden by the
quay.'
'Heavens!' I thought; 'she's no tea clipper, anyhow.'
I climbed up the bank and peered down in the darkness at the hull of a
small craft, a little larger than our old _Roysterer_. She was just
discernible by the dim rays of the anchor light. I was hesitating as to
whether I should not drive back to Yarmouth and return to London, when a
cheery voice on deck called out a hearty welcome. It broke the spell and
I had my cabby unload my bags on the bank. As his wheels rumbled away
into the rain and dark, I felt that my cables were cut. Too late to save
me, the cheery voice shouted, 'Mind the rigging, it's just tarred and
greased.' I was already sliding down in jerks, caused by my sticking to
it as I went. Small as the vessel was, she was absolutely spotless. Her
steward, who cooked for all hands, was smart and in a snow-white suit.
The contrast of between-decks and that above was very comforting, though
my quarters were small. The crew were all stocky, good-humoured, and
independent. Democratic as East London had made me, they impressed me
very favourably, and I began to look forward to the venture with real
pleasure.
Drink was the worst enemy of these men. The quay-sides of the
fishermen's quarters teemed with low saloons. Wages were even paid off
in them or their annexes, and grog vessels, luring men aboard with cheap
tobacco and low literature, plied their nefarious calling among the
fleets. They were the death, body and soul, of many of these fine
specimens of manhood. Many is the time I have pitied those who
manufacture and sell alcoholic drink to make a few sordid dollars.
Thirty years ago we were more conventional than to-day, and I was much
surprised to learn from our skipper that we were bound first to Ostend
to ship four tons of tobacco, sent over from England for us in bond,
since he might not take it out consigned to the high seas. In Belgium,
however, no duty was paid. The only trouble was that our vessel, to help
pay its expenses, carried fishing gear, and as a fishing vessel could
not get a clearance for trading even in Belgium. Our nets and beams,
therefore, had to go out to the fishing grounds in a friendly trawler,
while we passed as belonging to the mercantile marine during the time we
took on our cargo.
So bitter was the cold that in Ostend we got frozen in and were able to
skate up the harbour. We had eventually to get a steamer to go around us
and smash our ice bonds, when we were again ready for sea. During the
next two months we saw no land except Heligoland and Terschelling—or
Skilling, as the fishermen called it—far away in the offing. Nor was
our deck once clear of ice and snow during the whole time.
Our duty was to visit as many fleets as we could, and arrange with some
reliable vessel to take a stock of tobacco for the use of their special
fleet. The ship was to carry about six feet of blue bunting on her
foretopmast stay, a couple of fathoms above her bowsprit end, so that
all the fleet might know her. She was to sell the tobacco at a fixed
price that just covered the cost, and undersold the 'coper' or grog
vessel by fifty per cent. She was to hoist her flag for business every
morning, while the small boats were out boarding fish on the carrier,
and was to lie as far to leeward of the coper as possible so that the
men could not go to both. Nineteen such floating depots were eventually
arranged for, with the precaution that if any one of them had to return
to port, he should bring no tobacco home, but hand over his stock and
accounts to a reliable friend.
These deep-sea fisheries were a revelation to me. It was amazing to find
over twenty thousand men and boys afloat—the merriest, cheerfullest lot
which I had ever met. They were hail-fellow-well-met with everyone, and
never thought of deprivation or danger. Clothing, food, conventions were
all subordinated to utility. In efficiency and for their daring
resourcefulness in physical difficulties and dangers, they were
absolutely in a class by themselves, embodying all the traits of
character which make men love to read the stories of the buccaneers and
other seamen of the sixteenth century.
Each fleet had its admiral and vice-admiral, appointed partly by the
owner and partly by the skippers of the vessels. The admiral directed
operations by flags in the daytime and by rockets at night, thus
indicating what the fleet was to do and where they were to fish.
Generally he had the fastest boat, and the cutters hunting for the fleet
always lay just astern of the admiral, the morning after their arrival.
Hundreds of men would come for letters, packages, to load fish, or to
get the news of what their last consignment fetched in the market.
Moreover, a kind of Parliament was held aboard the cutter every morning,
to consider policies and hear complaints.
At first it was a great surprise to me how these men knew where they
were, for we never saw anything but sky and sea, and not even the
admirals carried a chronometer or could work out a longitude; while only
a small percentage of the skippers could read or write. They all,
however, carried a sextant and could by rule of thumb find a latitude
roughly. But that was only done at a pinch. The armed lead was the
fisherman's friend. It was a heavy lead with a cup on the bottom filled
fresh each time with sticky grease. When used, the depth was always
called out by the watch, and the kind of sand, mud, or rock which stuck
to the grease shown to the skipper. 'Fifteen fathoms and coffee
grounds—must be on the tail end of the Dogger. Put her a bit more to
the westward, boy,' he would remark, and think no more about it, though
he might have been three or four days looking for his fleet and not
spoken to a soul since he left land. I remember one skipper used to have
the lead brought down below, and he could tell by the grit between his
teeth after a couple of soundings which way to steer. It sounds strange
even now, but it was so universal, being just second-nature to the men
who from boyhood had lived on the sea, that we soon ceased to marvel at
it. Skippers were only just being obliged to have certificates. These
were obtained by _viva voce_ examinations. You would sometimes hear an
aspiring student, a great black-bearded pirate over forty-seven inches
around the chest, and possibly the father of eight or ten children, as
he stamped about in his watch keeping warm, repeating the courses—'East
end of the Dogger to the Horn. S.E. by E. ½ E. and W. point of the
island [Heligoland], to Borkum, S.S.E.'
Whatever they did, they did hard. One of the admirals, being a thirsty
soul, and the grog vessels having been adrift for a longer while than he
fancied, conceived the fine idea of holding up the Heligoland saloons.
So one bright morning he hove his fleet to under the lee of the island
and a number of boats went ashore, presumably to sell fish. Altogether
they landed some five hundred men, who held up the few saloons for two
or three days. As a result subsequently only one crew selling fish to
the island was allowed ashore at a time. The very gamble of their
occupation made them do things hard. It was a dangerous task to throw
out a small boat in half a gale of wind, fill her up with heavy boxes of
fish, and send her to put these over the rail of a steamer wallowing in
the trough of a mountainous sea.
It was on these very days, when less fish was sent to market, that the
best prices were realized, and so there were always a number of
dare-devils, who did not care if lives were lost so long as good prices
were obtained, and their own record stood high on the weekly list of
sales, which was forwarded to both owners and men. I have known as many
as fourteen men upset in one morning out of these boats; and the annual
loss of some three hundred and fifty men was mostly from this cause.
Conditions were subsequently improved by the Board of Trade, who made it
manslaughter against the skipper if any man was drowned boarding fish,
unless the admiral had shown his flags to give the fleet permission to
do so. In those days, however, I often saw twenty to thirty boats tied
up alongside the cutter at one time, the heavy seas every now and again
rolling the cutter's rail right under water, which, when she righted
again, might come up under the keels of some of the boats and tip them
upside-down. Thus, anyone in them was caught like a mouse under a trap
or knocked to pieces trying to swim among the rushing, tossing boats.
As a rule, we hauled the net at midnight. This was always a fresh source
of wonder, for the trawl was catholic in its embrace, and brought up
anything that came in its way. To emphasize how comparatively recently
the Channel had been dry land, many teeth and tusks of mammals who used
to roam its now buried forests were given up to the nets by the
ever-shifting sands. Old wreckage of every description, ancient
crockery, and even a water-logged old square-rigger that must have sunk
years before were brought one day as far as the surface by the stout
wire warp. After the loss of a large steamer called the _Elbe_, many of
the passengers who had been drowned were hauled up in this way; and on
one occasion great excitement was caused in Hull by a fisher lad from
that port being picked up with his hands tied behind his back and a
heavy weight on his feet. The defence was that the boy had died and was
thus buried to save breaking the voyage—supported by the fact that
another vessel had also picked up the boy and thrown him overboard again
for the same reason. But some thought otherwise, and more especially as
cruelty to these boys was not unknown.
These lads were apprenticed to the fishery masters largely from
industrial or reformatory schools. They had no relations to look after
them, and often no doubt gave the limit of trouble and irritation. On
the whole, however, the system worked well, and a most excellent class
of capable seamen was developed. At times, however, they were badly
exploited. During their apprenticeship years they were not entitled to
pay, only to pocket money, and yet sometimes the whole crew including
the skipper were apprentice and under twenty-one years of age. After
that they were fitted for no other calling but to follow the sea, and
had to accept the master's terms. There were no fishermen's unions, and
the men, being very largely illiterate, were often left victims of a
peonage system in spite of the Truck Acts. The master of a vessel has to
keep discipline, especially in a fleet, and the best of boys have faults
and need punishing while on land. These skippers themselves were brought
up in a rough school; and those who fell victims to drink and made the
acquaintance of the remedial measure of our penal system of that day
were only further brutalized by it. Religion scarcely touched the
majority, for their brief periods of leave ashore were not unnaturally
spent in having a good time. To those poisoned by the villainous
beverages sold on the sordid grog vessels, no excess was too great.
Owners were in sympathy with the Mission in trying to oust the coper,
because their property, in the form of fish, nets, stores, and even
sails, was sometimes bartered on the high seas for liquor. On one
occasion during a drunken quarrel in the coper's cabin one skipper threw
the kerosene lamp over another lying intoxicated on the floor. His heavy
wool jersey, soaked in kerosene, caught fire. He rushed for the deck,
and then, a dancing mass of flames, leaped overboard and disappeared.
[Illustration: LABRADOR IN SUMMER]
Occasionally skippers devised punishments with a view to remedying the
defects of character. Thus, one lad, who through carelessness had on
more than one occasion cooked the 'duff' for dinner badly, was made to
take his cinders on deck when it was his time to turn in, and go forward
to the fore-rigging, when he had to take one cinder, go up to the
cross-tree, and throw it over into the sea, come down the opposite
rigging and repeat the act until he had emptied his scuttle. Another who
had failed to clean the cabin properly had one night, instead of going
to bed, to take a bucketful of sea water and empty it with a teaspoon
into another, and so to and fro until morning. On one occasion a poor
boy was put under the ballast deck—that is, the cabin floor—and
forgotten. He was subsequently found dead, drowned in the bilge-water.
It was easy to hide the results of cruelty, for being washed overboard
was by no means an uncommon way of disappearing from vessels with low
freeboards in the shallow waters of the North Sea.
There is so much that is manly about the lives of those who follow the
sea, so much less artificiality than in many other callings, and with
our fishermen so many fewer of what we call, loosely, 'chances in life,'
that to sympathize with them was easy—and sympathy is a long step
toward love. Life at sea breaks down conventional barriers, and almost
compels fellowship and an intelligent understanding of the difficulties
and tragedies of the soul of one's neighbour. That rare faculty of
imagination, which is the inspiration of all great lovers of men, was
unnecessary here. The conviction that these men needed what I had to
give, and that it would not be given if I refused the challenge, was as
plain as daylight.
In other words, the field of work offered what I still consider as the
most remunerative returns for any man's abilities; or, to put it in
another way, it made me believe that my special capacities and training
could be used to make new men as well as new bodies. Any idea of
sacrifice was balanced by the fact that I never cared much for the
frills of life so long as the necessities were forthcoming. Science
taught me that 'little' and 'big' are relative terms only. The greatest
Life ever lived was no smaller for being staged in a village carpenter's
shop among fishermen.
Another movement was just starting at that time which interested me
considerably. It was an organization called the Public School Camps. An
integral part of my summer holidays during these years was spent as
medical officer at one of these camps. For many reasons in England it
was wise to run them on military lines, for, besides the added dignity,
it ensured the ability to maintain order and discipline. Some well-known
commandant was chosen who was a soldier also in the good fight of faith.
Special sites were selected, generally on the grounds of some big
country seat, which were lent by the interested lord of the manor, and
every kind of outdoor attraction was provided which could be secured.
Besides organized competitive games, there was usually a yacht, good
bathing, always a gymkhana, and numerous expeditions and hikes. All of
the work of the camp was done by the boys, who each served in turn on
orderly duty. The officers were always, if possible, prominent athletes,
to whom the boys could look up as being capable in physical as well as
in spiritual fields. There was a brief address each night before taps in
the big marquee used for mess; and one night there was always a straight
talk on the problems of sex by one of the medical officers, whom the
boys were advised to consult on their perplexities. These camps are
among my happiest memories. Many men to-day gratefully acknowledge that
these camps were the turning-point of their whole lives. The secret was
unconventionality and absolute naturalness, with no shibboleths. The
boys were encouraged to be boys in an atmosphere of sincere, if not
omniscient fervour. On one occasion, when breaking up camp, a
curly-headed young rascal in my tent, being late on the last
morning—unknown to anyone—went to the train in his pyjamas, hidden
only by his raincoat. At a small wayside station over a hundred miles
from London, whither he was bound, leaving his coat in the carriage, he
ventured into the refreshment stall of the waiting-room. Unfortunately,
however, he came out only to find his train departed and himself in his
night-clothes on the platform without a penny, a ticket, or a friend.
Eluding the authorities, he reached the huge Liverpool Street terminus
at night to find a faithful friend waiting on the platform for him with
a sorely needed overgarment.
Our North Sea work grew apace. Vessel after vessel was added to the
fleet. Her Majesty Queen Victoria became interested, and, besides
subscribing personally toward the first hospital boat, permitted it to
be named in her honour. According to custom, the builders had a
beautiful little model made which Her Majesty agreed to accept. It was
decided that it should be presented to her in Buckingham Palace by the
two senior Mission captains.
The journey to them was a far more serious undertaking than a winter
voyage on the Dogger Bank. However, arrayed in smart blue suits and new
guernseys and polished to the last degree, they set out on the eventful
expedition. On their return, everyone was as anxious to know 'how the
voyage had turned out' as if they had been exploring new fishing grounds
around the North Cape or in the White Sea. 'Nothing to complain of,
boys, till just as we had her in the wind's eye to shoot the gear,' said
the senior skipper. 'A big swell in knee-breeches opened the door and
called out our names, when I was brought up all standing, for I saw that
the peak halyard was fast on the port side. The blame thing was too
small for me to shift her, so I had to leave it. But, believe me, she
never said a word about it. That's what I call a lady.'
Our work had now extended to the herring fleets of Manxmen, Irishmen,
Scotch, and English off West Ireland. One day we had landed on the Aran
Islands, and I was hunting ferns in the rock crevices, for owing to the
warmth of the Gulf Current the growth is luxuriant. On the top of the
cliffs about three hundred feet high, I fell in with two Irishmen
smoking their pipes and sprawling on the edge of the precipice. The
water below was very deep and they were fishing. I had the fun of seeing
dangling codfish hauled leisurely up all that long distance. If one fell
off on the journey up, it was amusing to note the absolute insouciance
of the fishermen, who assured me that there were plenty more in the sea.
On these wild coasts, calls for help frequently came from the poor
settlers as well as from the seafarers. A summons coming in one day from
the Fastnet Light, we rowed out in a small boat to that lonely rock in
the Atlantic. A heavy sea, however, making landing impossible, we caught
hold of a buoy, anchored off from the rock, and then, rowing in almost
to the surf, caught a line from the high overhanging crane. A few
moments later one was picked out of the tumbling, tossing boat like a
winkle from a shell, by a noose at the end of a line from a crane a
hundred and fifty feet above, was swung perpendicularly up into the air,
and then round and into a trapdoor in the side of the lighthouse. On
leaving, one was swung out again in the same fashion, and dangled over
the tumbling boat until caught and pulled in by the oarsmen.
Another day we rowed out nine miles in an Irish craft to visit the
Skerry Islands, famous for the old Beehive Monastery and the countless
nests of gannets and other large sea-birds. The cliffs rise to a great
height precipitously, and the ceaseless thunder of the Atlantic swell
jealously guards any landing. There being no davit or crane, we just had
to fling ourselves into the sea and climb up as best we could, carrying
a line to haul up our clothing from the boat and other apparatus after
landing, while the oarsmen kept her outside the surf. To hold on to the
slippery rock we needed but little clothing, anyhow, for the clinging
power of one's bare toes was essential. The innumerable gannets sitting
on their nests gave the island the appearance of a snowdrift; and we
soon had all the eggs that we needed lowered by a line. But some of the
gulls, of whose eggs we wanted specimens also, built so cleverly on to
the actual faces of the cliffs, that we had to adopt the old plan of
hanging over the edge and raising the eggs on the back of one's foot,
which is an exploit not devoid of excitement. The chief difficulty was,
however, with one of our number, who literally stuck on the top, being
unable to descend, at least in a way compatible with comfort or safety.
The upshot was that he had to be blindfolded and then helped down.
Among the many memories of the Irish coast which gave me a vision of the
land question as it affected the people in those days, one in particular
has always remained with me. We had made a big catch in a certain bay, a
perfectly beautiful inlet. To see if the local fishermen could find a
market within reach of these fishing grounds, with one of the crew, and
the fish packed in boxes, I sailed up the inlet to the market-town of
Belmullet. Being Saturday, we found a market in progress, and buyers
who, encouraged by one of the new Government light railways, were able
to purchase our fish. That evening, however, when half-way home, a
squall suddenly struck our own lightened boat and capsized her. By
swimming and manœuvring the boat, we made land on some low, muddy flats.
No house was in sight, and it was not until long after dark that we two
shivering masses of wet mud reached an isolated cabin in the middle of a
patch of redeemed ground right in the centre of a large bog. A miserably
clad woman greeted us with a warm Irish welcome. The house had only one
room, which accommodated the livestock as well as the family. A fine cow
stood in one corner; while a donkey tied to the foot of the bed was
patiently looking down into the face of the baby. The father was in
England harvesting. A couple of pigs lay under the bed, and the floor
space was still further encroached upon by a goodly number of chickens,
which, encouraged by the warmth of the peat fire, not only thought it
their duty to accord us a welcome, but—misled by the firelight—kept
saluting the still far-off dawn. The resultant emotions led us on
departing to suggest that out of gratitude we would like to assist with
the erection of a cattle-pen. Our overtures were, however, rejected on
the ground that 'Shure t'rint would be raised in the fall' if any such
signs of prosperity as farm buildings greeted the land agent's arrival.
The voyage closed amongst the enormous fleet of Scotch herringers
fishing off the Island of Lewis. Millions of herrings are taken. I have
seen a mile of nets at a time sunk by the fish, while enough nets were
set each night to reach to America and back again. The oil from the fish
made the water so glassy that you could sail with a strong breeze and
not see a ripple on the surface. The Society as a result established a
summer Mission station at Stornoway for these men. A more pious set of
men I never met, especially in their rigid keeping of Sunday. We learned
to have the profoundest respect and affection for these men.
The introduction of the Mission ship on the seas banished utterly the
grog ship. International prohibition of the sale of alcoholic liquors to
fishermen on the high seas was obtained, and, the rich being as
interested as the poor in maintaining it, it has proved an enormous
blessing. But it was not a mere negative law that achieved the end with
the great blessings that accompanied it. The grog ship was replaced by
the Mission, hardship by friendship and worship. The secret was that a
new fleet was built up.
CHAPTER VI
NORTH OF THE ROARING FORTIES
IN 1891, the present Lord Southborough, then a member of our Board,
returned from a visit to Canada and Newfoundland. He brought before the
Council the opportunities for service among the fishermen of the
north-west Atlantic, and I was asked if I would cross the Atlantic in
one of our sailing vessels, and look into the problem.
Critical friends have thought that the decision to go was made under
strong religious excitement and in response to a deep-seated conviction
that material sacrifices or physical discomforts commended one to God. I
must disclaim all such lofty motives. I have always believed that the
Good Samaritan went across the road to the wounded man just because he
wanted to. I do not believe that he felt any sacrifice or fear in the
matter. There is everything about such a venture as sailing to Labrador
to attract my type of mind, and making preparations for the long voyage
was an unmitigated delight.
The good ship _Albert_, which I selected, was ketch-rigged—much like a
yawl, but more comfortable for lying-to in heavy weather, the sail area
being more evenly distributed. As her freeboard was only three feet, we
replaced her wooden hatches, which were large for lowering patients, by
smaller iron ones; and also sheathed her forward along the water-line
with greenheart to protect her planking in ice. For running in high seas
we put a large squaresail forward, tripping the yard along the foremast,
much like a spinnaker boom. Having a screw steering-gear which took two
men to handle quickly enough when she yawed and threatened to jib in a
big swell, this proved very useful.
It was not until the spring of 1892 that we were ready to start. We had
secured a master with a certificate, for, though I was myself a master
mariner and my mate had been in charge of our vessel in the North Sea
for many years, we had neither of us been across the Atlantic before.
The skipper was a Cornishman and a martinet on discipline—an entirely
new experience to a crew of North Sea fishermen. Nothing was wanting
when at last, in the second week of June, the tugboat let us go, and
crowds of friends waved us good-bye from Yarmouth pier-head as we passed
out with all our bunting flying. We had not intended to touch land again
until it should rise out of the western horizon, but off the south coast
of Ireland we met with heavy seas and head winds, so we ran into
Crookhaven. Our old patients in that lonely corner were greatly
interested in the new venture, and many were the good eggs and 'meals of
greens' which were brought down to the ship as parting tokens. Indeed,
we shrewdly guessed that our 'dry' principles alone robbed us of more
than one 'drop o' potheen' whose birth the light of the moon had
witnessed.
Our ship was just the size of the famous _Matthew_, and we followed
almost the exact footsteps of the great John Cabot, when just four
hundred years before he had fared forth on his famous adventure.
Sir Ernest Shackleton, in taking the chair for me at a lecture in
London, stated that the first English vessel which sailed to
Newfoundland was called the _Grenfell_. It would be pleasant to think it
was named in honour of my famous old forbear, Sir Richard Grenville,
though the business worthy of the steel of gentlemen of his day was
chiefly 'splitting weazands.' In one letter upon which he ventured he
achieved three different ways of spelling his own name. They left even
calligraphy 'to hireling varlets and to shaveling priests.'
As we were not fortunate in encountering fair winds, it was not until
the twelfth day that we saw our first iceberg, almost running into it in
a heavy fog. The fall in the temperature of the sea surface had warned
us that we were in the cold current, and three or four days of dense fog
emphasized the fact. Suddenly on the seventeenth day the fog lifted, and
a high evergreen-crowned coast-line greeted our delighted eyes. A lofty
lighthouse on a rocky headland enabled us almost immediately to discover
our exact position. We were just a little north of St. John's Harbour,
which, being my first landfall across the Atlantic, impressed me as a
source for satisfaction. What was our surprise as we approached the high
cliffs which guard the entrance to see dense columns of smoke arising,
and to feel the offshore wind grow hotter and hotter as the pilot tug
towed us between the headlands. For the third time in its history the
whole city of St. John's was in flames.
The heat was fierce when we at last anchored; and had the height of the
blaze not passed, we should certainly have been glad to seek again the
company of our icy friends outside. Some ships had even been burned at
their anchors. We could count thirteen raging fires in various parts of
the city, which looked like one vast funeral pyre. Only the brick
chimneys of the houses remained standing blackened and charred. Smoke
and occasional flame would burst out here and there, as the fickle
eddies of wind whirled around as if in sport over the scene of man's
discomfitures. On the hill-side stood a solitary house quite unharmed,
seeming to mock the still smouldering wreck of the beautiful stone
cathedral just beside it. Among the ruins in this valley of desolation
little groups of men darted hither and thither, resembling nothing so
much as tiny black imps revelling in a congenial environment. I hope
never again to see a sight that suggested Gehenna even to a less active
imagination than Dante's.
The cheerfulness of the town was amazing. Scarcely a 'peep' or 'squeal'
did we hear, and not a single diatribe against the authorities. All had
suffered together. Nor was it due to anyone's fault. True, the town
water-supply had been temporarily out of commission, some stranger was
said to have been smoking in the hayloft, Providence had not specially
intervened to save property, and hence this result. It was a city of
hope, not of despair, and to our amazement they were able to show most
kindly interest in problems such as ours, which seemed so remote at the
moment.
I had expected to spend the greater part of our time cruising among the
fishing schooners out of sight of land on the big Banks, as we did in
the North Sea, but I was advised that, chiefly owing to fog, each vessel
worked separately and brought its own catch to market. It would,
therefore, be a much more profitable outlay of time if we were to follow
the large fleet of over a thousand schooners, carrying some thirty
thousand fishermen, women, and children, which had just sailed north for
the summer fishery along the coast of Labrador. Naturally a good deal of
delay occurred owing to the unusual congestion of business which needed
immediate attention, and the unfortunate temporary lack of facilities
but we got under way at last, and sailing 'down North' for some four
hundred miles well outside the land, eventually we ran in on a parallel
and made the Labrador Coast on the fourth of August.
Forty years have passed away since that day, and a thousand more
important affairs which have occurred in the meantime have faded from my
memory; but still its events stand out clear and sharp. Round Hill
Island, covered with green verdure, so wonderful a landmark from the
sea, its peaks capped with the fleecy mist of early morning, rose in a
setting of the purest azure blue. For the first time I saw its ruddy
cliffs, their ledges picked out with the homes of myriads of birds. Its
feet were bathed in the dark, rich green of the Atlantic waters, edged
by the line of white breakers, where the gigantic swell lazily hurled
immeasurable mountains of water against its titanic bastions, evoking
peals of sound like thunder from its cavernous recesses—a very riot of
magnificence. It answers to the description of St. John's Island given
by John Cabot as his first sight of the American continent. The great
schools of whales, noisily slapping the calm surface of the sea with
their huge tails as in an abandon of joy, dived and rose, and at times
threw the whole of their mighty carcasses right out of the water for a
bath in the glorious morning sunshine. The shoals of fish everywhere
breaching the water, and the silver streaks which flashed beneath our
bows as we lazed along, suggested that the whole vast ocean was too
small to hold its riches.
When we realized that practically no man had ever lived there, and few
had even seen it, it seemed to overwhelm us, coming as we did from the
crowded island of our birth, where notices not to trespass haunted the
dreams of the average man.
A serried rank of range upon range of hills, reaching north and south as
far as the eye could see from the masthead, was rising above our horizon
behind a very surfeit of islands, bewildering the minds of men
accustomed to our English and North Sea coast-lines.
At last we came to anchor among many schooners in a wonderful natural
harbour called Domino Run, which in turn would answer to the harbour
into which Cabot sailed and anchored. The distance of three hundred
leagues from Cape Farewell which he had logged corresponds much more
nearly, if we add the drift of the polar current, than does Gull Island
off Newfoundland and the present Cape St. John which some claim to have
been his landfall.
Had we been painted scarlet and flown the Black Jack instead of the Red
Ensign, we could not have attracted more attention. Flags of greeting
were run up to all mastheads, and boats from all sides were soon aboard
enquiring what the strange phenomenon meant. Our object explained, we
soon had calls for a doctor. Indeed, it has been the experience of
almost every visitor to the coast from that day to this that he is
expected to have a knowledge of medicine.
Late in the evening, when the rush of visitors was largely over, I
noticed a miserable bunch of boards, serving as a boat, with only a dab
of tar along its seams, lying motionless a little way from us. In it,
sitting silent, was a half-clad, brown-haired, brown-faced figure. After
long hesitation, during which time I had been watching him from the
rail, he suddenly asked:
'Be you a real doctor?'
'That's what I call myself,' I replied.
'Us hasn't got no money,' he fenced, 'but there's a very sick man
ashore, if so be you'd come and see him.'
He led me to a tiny sod-covered hovel, compared with which the Irish
cabins were palaces. It had one window of odd fragments of glass. The
floor was of pebbles from the beach; the earth walls were damp and
chilly. There were half a dozen rude wooden bunks built in tiers around
the single room. A group of some six neglected children, frightened by
our arrival, were huddled together in one corner. A very sick man was
coughing his soul out in the darkness of a lower bunk, while a pitiably
covered woman gave him cold water to sip out of a spoon. There was no
furniture except a small stove with an iron pipe leading through a hole
in the roof.
My heart sank as I thought of the little I could do for the sufferer in
such surroundings. He had pneumonia, a high fever, and was probably
tubercular. The thought of our attractive little hospital on board at
once rose to my mind; but how could one sail away with this husband and
father, probably never to bring him back? Advice, medicine, a few
packages of food, were only temporizing. The poor mother could never
nurse him and tend the family. Furthermore, their earning season, 'while
the fish were in,' was slipping away. To pray for the man, and with the
family, was easy, but scarcely satisfying. A hospital with a trained
nurse was the only chance for this bread-winner, and neither was
available.
I called in, a couple of months later, as we came south before the
approach of winter. Snow was already on the ground. The man was dead and
buried; there was no provision whatever for the family, who were
destitute, except for the hollow mockery of a widow's grant of twenty
dollars a year from the Government. This, moreover, had to be taken up
in goods at a truck store at their prices, less debts _if_ she owed any.
Among the nine hundred patients recorded on that long-ago voyage, some
stand out for their peculiar pathos and utter helplessness. In firing to
salute the arrival of the Moravian Mission ship, the gun of a poor
Eskimo had exploded prematurely, blowing off both the man's arms below
the elbows. He had been lying on his back for a fortnight. The pathetic
stumps were covered only with far from sterile rags dipped in cold
water. We remained some days, and did all we could for him; but he too
joined the great host that is forever 'going west,' for want of what the
world fails to give them.
The successful removal of a molar which has given torture for weeks, in
a dentistless country, gains one as much gratitude as the amputation of
a limb. One mere boy came to me with necrosis of one side of his entire
lower jaw, due to nothing but neglected toothache. It had to be dug out
from the new covering of bone which had grown up all around it. The
whimsical expression of his lop-sided face still haunts me.
Deformities went untreated. The crippled and blind halted through life,
victims of what 'the blessed Lord saw best for them.' The torture of an
ingrowing toe-nail, which could be relieved in a few minutes, had
incapacitated one poor father for years. Tuberculosis and rickets went
unchecked. Preventable poverty was the efficient handmaid of these two
latter diseases.
There was also endless social work to be done. Education in every one of
its branches—especially public health—was almost non-existent, as were
many simple social amenities which might have been so easily accorded.
At one harbour a woman with five children asked me as a magistrate if I
could marry her to her husband. They had never been together when a
parson happened along, and they were then living in a lonely cove three
miles away. This seemed a genuine case of distress, and as it happened
that a parson was taking a passage with us, we sent two of our crew over
in a boat to round up the groom. Apparently he was not at all anxious;
but being a very small man and she a large woman, he discreetly
acquiesced. The wedding was held on board our ship, everyone entering
into the spirit of the unusual occasion. The main hold was crammed with
guests, the ship's bell was rung, and flags flown, guns fired, and at
night distress rockets were sent up, and such a meal served as that five
had never dreamed of.
Obviously the Coast offered work for us that would not be done unless we
did it. Here was real need along any and every line, in a section of our
own Empire and where the people embodied all our best sea traditions.
They exhibited many of the attractive characteristics which, even when
buried beneath habits and customs the outcome of their environment,
always endear men of the sea to the genuine Anglo-Saxon. They were
uncomplaining, optimistic, splendidly resourceful, cheerful, and
generous—and after all, soap and water only make the outside of the
platter clean.
We had greatly enjoyed the adventure _qua_ adventure. Mysterious fjords
which wound out of sight into the fastnesses of unknown mountains, and
which were entirely uncharted, fairly shouted an invitation to enter and
discover what was round the next corner. Islands by the hundred,
hitherto never placed on any map, challenged one's hydrographic skill.
Families of strange birds, which came swinging seaward as the season
advanced, suggested a virgin field for hunting. Berries and flowering
plants, as excellent as they were unfamiliar, appealed for exploration.
Great boulders perched on perilous peaks, torn and twisted strata, with
here and there raised beaches and great outcrops of black traprock
piercing through red granite cliffs in giant vertical seams—all piqued
one's curiosity to know the geological story of this unknown land. Some
stone arrow-heads and knives, brought to me by a fisherman, together
with the memories that the Norse Vikings and their competitors on the
scroll of discovery who made their first landfall on this the nearest
section of the American coast to Europe, excited one's curiosity to know
more of these shores. The dense growth of evergreen trees abounding in
every river valley and the exquisite streams with trout and salmon and
seals attracted one whose familiarity with sport and forests was
inseparably connected with notices to trespassers, and flatly
contradicted the impression left by the predatory explorers of
Columbus's age.
It was a genuine surprise to me one morning to find ice on deck, and a
scale of sparkling crystals most beautifully picking out the water-line
of our little craft. It was only then that I realized that October had
come. We could not stay, even though we felt the urgent call to remain.
So 'Heigho for the south'ard,' and a visit to St. John's to try and
arouse interest in the new-discovered problems, before we should once
more let go our stern-lines and be bowling homeward before the fall
nor'westers to dear old England.
Home-going craft had carried our story before us to the capital. The
Board of Trade had highly praised our effort. The papers had written of
the new phenomenon; the politicians had not refrained from commendation.
His Excellency the Governor made our path easy by calling a meeting in
Government House and passing a more than appreciative resolution,
suggesting our directors be invited to 'repeat the dose.'
The voyage home was uneventful except that I was nearly left behind in
mid-Atlantic. While playing cricket on deck, our last ball went over the
side, and I after it, shouting to the helmsman to tack back. This he
did. But I failed to cut him off the first time, as he got a bit
rattled. However, we rescued the ball.
Our report to the Council in London, followed by the resolution sent by
the Newfoundland Committee, was followed by a repetition of the venture
on a larger scale the following spring, when, with two young doctors and
two nurses, we again set out for Labrador. Meanwhile, we had chosen two
islands two hundred miles apart for cottage hospitals, one at Battle
Harbour, on the north side of the Straits of Belle Isle, and the other
at Indian Harbour, out in the Atlantic at the mouth of the great
Hamilton Inlet. Both places were the centres of large fisheries, and
were the 'bring-ups' for numberless schooners of the Labrador fleet on
their way north and south. The first, a building already half finished,
was donated by a local fishery firm of the name of Baine, Johnston and
Company. The second building, assembled at St. John's, was shipped by
the donors, who were the owners of the Indian Harbour fishery, Job
Brothers and Company. Owing to difficulties in landing, this building
was not completed and ready for use until the following year, so Dr.
Elliot Curwen took charge of the hospital ship _Albert_, and I cruised
as far north as Okkak (lat. 57°) in the _Princess May_, a midget steam
launch, eight feet wide, with a cook and an engineer. As there was no
coal obtainable in the North, we used wood, and her fire-box being small
the amount of cutting entailed left permanent impressions on our biceps.
A friend from Ireland had presented this little boat, which I found
'laying-up' on the Chester Race-course, near our home by the Sands of
Dee. My brother repaired her and steamed her through the canal into the
Mersey, where, somewhat to our humiliation, she had been slung up on to
the deck of an Allan liner for her trans-Atlantic passage as if she were
nothing but an extra handbag. Nor was our pride restored when on her
arrival in St. John's it was found that her funnel was missing among the
'passengers' baggage' in the hold! The close of the voyage proved a
fitting corollary. In crossing the Straits of Belle Isle, being the last
boat to leave the Labrador for the winter, we ran short of fuel and had
to burn our cabin-top to make the Newfoundland Coast, having also lost
our compass overboard. Here we delayed repairing and refitting so long
that the authorities in St. John's became alarmed and kindly despatched
their mail steamer in search of us. I still remember my astonishment
when, on boarding the steamer, the skipper, a very tender-hearted
fellow, threw both arms around me with a mighty hug and exclaimed,
'Thank God! We all thought you were gone. A schooner picked up your
flagpole at sea.' Poor fellow, only a year or two later he perished with
his large steamer, while I still rove this rugged coast forty years
later. That summer we visited the then five stations of the Moravian
Brethren, which Society for one hundred and fifty years had been working
among the Eskimos of the Labrador. It would be scarcely modest for me to
protest that they were any the worse for never having had a doctor among
them, but I naturally thought so, especially as I found among the
Eskimos a great deal of tuberculosis and much eye trouble.
Around the Moravian Mission stations wooden houses had largely replaced
the former _tubiks_ or skin tents, which had been moved as occasion
required and so provided for sanitation. These wooden huts were
undrained, dark, and dirty. No water-supply was provided, and the spaces
between the houses were simply indescribable garbage heaps, presided
over by innumerable dogs. The average life was very short and infant
mortality high. The features of the native life which appealed most to
us were the universal optimism, the laughing good-nature and
contentment, and the Sunday cleanliness of the entire congregation which
swarmed into the chapel service, a welcome respite from the perennial
dirt of the week-days. Moreover, nearly all had been taught to read and
write in Eskimo, though there is no literature in that language to read
except the Bible and a hymn-book that have been translated by the
Moravian Brethren. At that time a strict policy of teaching no English
had been adopted. Words lacking in the language, like 'God,' 'love,'
etc., were substituted by German words. Nearly every Eskimo counted,
'_ein, zwei, drei_.' In one of my lectures, on returning to England, I
mentioned that, as the Eskimos had never seen a lamb or a sheep either
alive or in a picture, the Moravians, in order to offer them an
intelligible and appealing simile, had most wisely substituted the
_kotik_, or white seal, for the phrase 'the Lamb of God.' One old lady
in my audience must have felt that the good Brethren were tampering
unjustifiably with Holy Writ, for the following summer, from the barrels
of clothing sent out to the Labrador, was extracted a dirty, distorted,
and much-mangled and wholly sorry-looking woolly toy lamb. Its _raison
d'être_ was a mystery until we read the legend carefully pinned to one
dislocated leg, 'Sent in order that the heathen may know better.'
The Eskimo love for music and ability to do part-playing and singing
greatly impressed us, and we spent many evenings enjoying their brass
bands and their Easter and Christmas carols. We made some records of
these on our Edison phonograph, and they were overpowered with joy when
they heard their own voices coming back to them from the machine. The
magic lantern also proved exceedingly popular. We were able to show some
hastily made lantern slides of themselves, when several tried to feel
themselves on the screen. The following season, in giving them some
lantern views, we chanced to show a slide of an old Eskimo woman who had
died during the winter. The subsequent commotion caused among the little
people was unintelligible to us until one of the Moravian Brethren
explained that they thought her spirit had taken visible form and
returned to her old haunts. The simplicity of mind was again illustrated
when years later one of our survey planes came right down by a group of
them. The first question asked, when they recovered speech, was, 'Did
you see Christ up there?'
One August evening, I happened to be in the gardens at Nain, when the
thermometer stood only a little above freezing. A troop of Eskimo women
came out to cover up the potatoes. Every row of potatoes is covered with
arched sticks and long strips of canvas along them. A huge roll of
sacking is kept near each row and the whole is drawn over and the
potatoes are tucked in bed for the night. I could not resist the
temptation to lift the bedclothes and shake hands and say good-night to
one of the nearest plants, whereat the merry little people went off into
convulsions of laughter.
When one reads the story of the Moravian Brethren, however, everyone
must be intensely grateful to them for the great amount of good they
have accomplished for the Eskimos.
One outstanding feature everywhere impressed an Englishman in
Labrador—that is, the absolute necessity for some standard medium of
exchange. Till one has seen the truck system at work, its evil effects
in enslaving and demoralizing the poor are impossible to realize. All
the length and breadth of the coast, the poorer people would show me
their 'settling up,' if ever they got one, always showing that they
lived and died in debt to their merchant. They never knew the
independence of a dollar in their pockets and the consequent incentive
to and value of thrift. It was incredible to me that large trading
concerns would not pay in cash for valuable furs, and that so many
dealers in the necessities of life should be still able to hold free men
in economic bondage.
This fact was first impressed upon me in an odd way. Early in the summer
a man had come aboard the hospital ship with a bear skin and a few other
furs to sell. We had not only been delighted with the chance to buy
them, but had spread them all around the cabin and taken a picture of
him in the middle.
Later in the season, while showing my photograph album to a trader, he
had suddenly remarked, 'Why, what's B—— doing here?'
'Selling me some beautiful furs,' I replied.
'Oh! was he?' said the man. 'I'll make him sing for selling the furs for
which I supplied him.'
It was no salve to his fretfulness when I assured him that I had paid in
good English gold, and that his 'dealer' would be as honest with the
money as the system had made him. The trader well knew that the truck
system creates slippery, tricky men; and the fisherman not infrequently
retaliates on the merchant, making the most of his few opportunities to
outwit him.
A few years later a man brought a silver-fox skin aboard my ship, just
such a one as I had been requested by an English lady to secure for her.
As fulfilling such a request would involve me in hostilities (which,
however, I do not think were useless), I asked the man, who was
wretchedly poor, if he owed the skin to the trader.
'I am in debt,' he replied, 'but they will allow me only eight dollars
off my account for this skin, and I want to buy some food.'
'Very well,' I answered. 'If you will promise to go at once and pay
eight dollars off your debt, I will give you eight gold sovereigns for
this skin.'
To this he agreed, and faithfully carried out the agreement—while the
English lady scored a bargain, and I a very black mark in the books of
my friend the trader until he saw the humour of it.
On another occasion my little steamer had temporarily broken down, and
to save time I had journeyed on in the jolly-boat, leaving the cook to
steer the vessel after me. I wanted to visit a very poor family, one of
whose eight children I had taken to hospital for bone tuberculosis the
previous year. As the steamer had not come along by night, I had to
sleep in the tiny one-roomed shack which served as his home. True, since
it stood on the edge of the forest, there was little excuse that it was
not larger; but the father, a most excellent, honest, and faithful
worker, was obviously discouraged. He had not nearly enough food for his
family, clothing was even more at a discount, tools with which to work
were almost as lacking as in a cave man's dwelling—the whole family was
going to pieces from sheer discouragement. The previous winter, on the
opposite bank of the same river, called Big River, a neighbour had in
desperation sent his wife and eldest boy out of the house, killed his
young family, and then shot himself.
When night came, five of the children huddled together for warmth in one
bed, and the parents and the rest of the family in the other. I spent
the night sleeping on the floor near the door in my sleeping-bag, with
my nose glued to the crack to get a breath of God's cold air. The window
was nailed down, as not a blanket did the house possess. When I asked, a
little hurt, where were a blanket or two which we had sent last year,
the mother somewhat indignantly pointed to various trousers and coats,
which betrayed their final resting-place, and remarked, 'If you'se had
five lads all trying to get under one covering to oncet, you'd soon know
what would happen to that blanket.'
Early in the morning I made a boiling of cocoa and took the two elder
boys out for a seal hunt while waiting for my little steamer. I was just
in time to see one boy carefully upset his mug of cocoa, when he thought
I was not looking, and replace it with cold spring water. 'I 'lows I'se
not accustomed to no sweetness' was his simple explanation. It was raw
and damp as we rowed into the estuary at sunrise in search of the seals.
I was chilly even in a well-lined leather coat. But the two shock-headed
boys, clad in ancient cotton shirts, and with what had once been cotton
overall jackets, were as jolly as crickets, and apparently almost unduly
warm. The Labrador has taught me one truth, which as a physician I never
forget, which is that coddling is the terrible menace of civilization,
and 'to endure hardness' is the best preparation for a 'good soldier.'
On leaving, I promised to send to those boys, whose contentment and
cheerfulness greatly endeared them to me, a dozen good fox traps in
order to give them a chance for the coming winter. Such a gift as those
old iron rat traps seemed in their eyes!! When at last they arrived, and
were really 'their own' possessions, no prince could have been prouder
than they. The next summer as I steamed north we called in at this
house. The same famine in the land seemed to prevail, the same lack of
apparently everything which I should have wanted. But the old infectious
smile was still presented with an almost religious ceremonial, and my
friend produced from his box a real silver-fox skin. 'I kep' it for
you'se, Doctor,' he said, 'though us hadn't ne'er a bite in t'house. I
know'd you'd do better'n we with he.'
I promised to try, and on my way called in at some northern islands
where my friend, Captain Bartlett, father of the celebrated 'Captain
Bob' of North Pole fame, carried on a summer trade and fishery. He
himself was a great seal and cod fisherman, and a man known for his
generous sympathy for others.
'Do your best for me, Captain Will,' I said, as I handed over the
skin—and on coming south I found a complete winter diet laid out for me
to take to that little house. It was a veritable full load for the small
carrying capacity of my little craft.
When we arrived at the house on the promontory, however, it was locked
up and the family gone. They were off fishing on the outer islands, so
all we could do was to break in the door, pile up the things inside, and
bar it up again, affixing a notice warning off bears, dogs, and all
poachers, and advising Dick that it was the price of his pelt. In the
note we also told him to put all the fur he caught the following winter
in a barrel and 'sit on it' till we came along, if he wanted a chance to
get ahead. This he did almost literally. We ourselves took his barrel to
the nearest cash buyer, and ordered for him goods in St. John's for cash
to the full amount realized. The fur brought more than his needs, and he
was able to help out neighbours by reselling at cash prices. This he did
till the day of his death, when he left me, as his executor, a couple of
hundred good dollars in cash to divide among his children, and a record
of never having again been in want.
It was experiments like this which led me in later years to start the
small co-operative distributive stores, in spite of the knowledge of the
opposition and criticism it would involve on the Coast. Numerous
instances show that as ever these difficulties are never caused by one
side only. Many splendid instances of unselfish generosity, as well as
some of the reverse, proved that no system alone can cure all ills; it
is the personalities behind that count always in the long run.
CHAPTER VII
LABRADOR: THE COUNTRY AND THE PEOPLE
BEFORE A.D. 1000, Norsemen, sailing past a bleak coastline, named the
stretches 'Wonderstrands,' because 'they took so long to sail by.' To
these early voyagers, as to the explorers who followed in the subsequent
centuries, Labrador looked stern and forbidding, and one and all these
explorers returned home to report a 'land covered with snow and ice, and
unfit for human habitation.' An early Spanish cartographer, when he drew
a map of the western world, wrote across a part of it: 'Labrador was
discovered by the English. There is nothing in it of any value.'
In the sixteenth century, Basque and Portuguese fishermen were attracted
to the shores of Labrador by the wealth of its fisheries and its whales.
From that time onward, these industries have been her chief
justification for existence. In 1669, a charter was granted 'to the
Governor and Company of Adventurers trading from England into Hudson's
Bay.'
Later, various trading-posts were established along the Coast, doing
business with the Indians who came out from the interior to barter their
furs for ammunition and food. It was not until the first half of the
nineteenth century that a few permanent fishing villages were allowed to
spring up along the Coast so that the hardy Anglo-Saxon inhabitants
could pursue their calling during the short months of open water and
then move up the long bays for the winter season and the fur-trapping.
Nobody knew who owned Labrador when first we saw it forty years ago, and
nobody cared. It had been tossed to and fro between England, America,
Canada, Newfoundland, and France. Newfoundland offered its rights to
Canada in 1890 for nine million dollars.
When conveyances were made, such maps as existed were not consulted
apparently, and no one even cared enough to worry where the boundaries
were. One day an impassioned preacher, while praying for Labrador,
landed himself in difficulties. He began: 'Thou knowest, O Lord, this
great and needy land, bounded on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean,
on the south by the mighty St. Lawrence River, on the north by the
frigid water of Hudson's Bay, and on the west by—O Lord, Thou knowest!'
When, later on, light began to be thrown upon Labrador, Newfoundland and
Canada spent a couple of million dollars in fighting as to who should
own it and as to where was the exact boundary line. The decision of 1927
hung on the original treaty, which was written in the words of the King
James Version of the Bible. It was argued that when that describes
Christ as walking in 'the coasts of Tyre and Sidon,' it did not mean
that He confined Himself to the three-mile limit. Newfoundland,
therefore, to her delight and amazement, was given, as at strict legal
interpretation of the actual words, though nothing of the kind was
intended, 'all land drained by the rivers running out on the east
coast.' As the Hamilton River runs in at least four hundred miles,
cutting through the height of land, this decision involved taking from
Canada a serious slice of the hinterland of Quebec. Newfoundland, having
thus won far more than she had hoped for, and having formerly offered
her rights to Canada for nine million dollars, promptly in 1932 offered
them again, for one hundred and ten million dollars.
Newfoundland is an autonomous government, having its own Governor sent
out from England, a Prime Minister, and Houses of Parliament in the city
of St. John's. Instead of being a Province of Canada, as is often
supposed, it stands in the same relationship to England as does the
great Dominion herself, with an entire population of less number than
one moderate town. Labrador being owned by Newfoundland, legally the
Labradormen are Newfoundlanders, though they have no representation in
the Newfoundland Government. At Blanc Sablon, on the north coast in the
Straits of Belle Isle, the Canadian Labrador begins, so far as the
coastline is concerned.
The original natives of Labrador were Eskimos and bands of roving
Indians. The Eskimos, one of the most interesting of primitive races,
have still a foothold in the North.
The Montagnais Indians roam the interior. They are a branch of the
ancient Algonquin race who held North America as far west as the
Rockies. They are the hereditary foes of the Eskimos, whole settlements
of whom they have more than once exterminated. Gradually, with the
influx of white settlers from Devon and Dorset, from Scotland and
France, the 'Innuits,' as the Eskimos call themselves, were driven
farther and farther north. There are less than a thousand on the North
Coast of Labrador to-day. Epidemic diseases and contact with white men
have been the cause. The remainder of the inhabitants of the country are
white men of our own blood and religion—men of the sea, dear to the
Anglo-Saxon heart.
There is a sharp demarcation between southern Newfoundland and the long
finger of land jutting northward, which at Cape Bauld splits the polar
current so that the shores of the narrow peninsula are continuously
bathed in icy waters. The north end of the Island is swept by biting
winds, and often for days on end is enveloped in a chilly and dripping
blanket of fog. The climate at the tip of the northward-pointing finger
is more severe than on the Labrador side of the Straits. A friend of
mine, for twenty-seven years factor of the Hudson's Bay Company in
Hudson's Bay Straits, told us that even in the extreme north of Labrador
he never really knew what cold was until he underwent the penetrating
experience of a winter at St. Anthony. The Lapp reindeer herders whom we
brought over from Lapland, a country lying well north of the Arctic
Circle, after spending a winter near St. Anthony, told me that they had
never felt anything like that kind of cold. Moreover, the hospital of
St. Anthony is farther north and farther east than two of our stations
on the Labrador side of the Straits of Belle Isle.
The latitude of Newfoundland and Labrador corresponds to that of England
and Scotland. Battle Harbour, Labrador, at the southernmost tip of the
country, is almost on a parallel with London, and is the nearest point
of North America to the Irish Coast, being almost exactly half-way
between New York and England; while the North Cape of Scotland and Cape
Chidley are practically in the same parallel of latitude. Thus Labrador
and North Newfoundland enjoy the same length of day and night as do
England and Scotland. The difference in climate of these two neighbours
is accounted for by the fact that, whereas the Gulf Stream bathes the
English coast, Labrador perpetually stands with its feet chilled in the
icy waters of the polar current. The dominant industry of the whole
colony is its fisheries—the ever-recurrent pursuit of the cod, salmon,
herring, halibut, and whale in summer, and the seal fishery in the month
of March. It is increasingly difficult to estimate the importance, not
merely to the British Empire, but to the entire world, of the invaluable
food-supply procured by our hardy fishermen. Its value as a nursery for
seamen was considered its chief value in sailing-craft days.
It was among these white fishermen that I came out to work primarily,
the floating population which every summer, some twenty thousand strong,
visits the coasts of Labrador. It was later that we included the
resident settlers of the Labrador and North Newfoundland coasts.
The coast of Labrador is international, in that the British, Canadian,
Newfoundland, and American fishermen have equal fishing rights there.
This very unusual circumstance is explained by the fact that, previous
to the war of the Revolution, the Governor of Boston was Governor of
Labrador, and the fishermen among the American colonists pursued their
calling all along this coast. Subsequent to the war, the Americans
pointed out that as they had not lost the issue they hoped that their
privileges might continue unaltered. This was agreed upon, and to-day
they have equal rights in the use of the territorial waters for the
hauling of bait and of nets.
The conditions prevailing among some of the people at the north end of
Newfoundland and of Labrador itself should not be confused with those of
their neighbours to the southward. Chronic poverty is, however, far from
being universally prevalent in the northern district. Some of the
fishermen lead a comfortable, happy, and prosperous life; but my old
diaries, as well as my present observations, furnish all too many
instances in which families exist well within the danger-line of
poverty, ignorance, and starvation. Hence, our work.
Since those old diaries were written, the inevitable results of the
Great War and of the world's political selfishness have nearly brought
our whole Colony into the hands of receivers; while the products of the
people's main industries—fish, fur, fish oils and whale oils, and
timber have become unmarketable at remunerative prices. Even the great
Hudson's Bay Company and our merchants and banks have suffered terribly,
and in the wake of this great depression many of our families are facing
nakedness and starvation—though with a courage that with these men of
the sea is always best at the times when their backs are to the wall. In
our judgment none of this was necessary. We know perfectly well that the
country can carry the people in perfect physical comfort. It is not
God's end that is wrong—it has been ours. Our form of government has
failed—wisdom to select capable men has not always been forthcoming.
Temptation has proved too great. It was recorded five thousand years ago
in the Bible, 'My people love to have it so.'
The privations which the inhabitants of the French or Treaty shore and
of Labrador have had to undergo, and their isolation from so many of the
benefits of civilization, have had varying effects on the residents of
the Coast. The Labrador fishermen of to-day find their counterpart in
the people of the Southern mountains of the United States. They speak
the same Elizabethan English, overlaid, to be sure, with a vernacular of
the sea. They were caught behind the Arctic waters of the North, an eddy
of civilization, just as the Southern mountaineers were cut off by their
hilly fastnesses from the onward march of what we so glibly style
'progress.' They are reactionary in matters of religion and education;
and their very 'speech betrays them,' belonging, as do so many of their
expressions, to the days when the Pilgrims went up to Canterbury, or
when a certain tinker wrote of another and more distant pilgrimage to
the City of Zion.
The people are, naturally, Christians of a devout and simple faith.
Their superstitions are of the date and brand when witches and
hobgoblins and charms and amulets were generally accepted beliefs. But
they are not very different from some which we at times suddenly find
that we ourselves do not altogether discredit. Let's touch wood, shall
we?
One is surprised, however, to see a fox's or a wolf's head suspended by
a cord from the ceiling, and to learn that it will always twist the way
from which the wind is going to blow. One man had a barometer of this
kind hanging from his roof, and explained that the peculiar fact was due
to the nature of the animals, which in life 'always went to windward of
others'; but if you had a seal's head similarly suspended it would turn
from the wind, owing to the timid character of that creature.
'I never gets sea boils,' one old sea-dog told me the other day.
'How is that?' I asked.
'Oh! I always cuts my nails on a Monday, and then I burns 'em.' The
potency of this charm lies in the unusualness of it.
A man came to me once to cure what he firmly believed was a balsam on
his baby's nose. The birthmark to him resembled that tree. 'Her
shouldn't 'a' gone into t'Bay for that there. Them balsams ain't
Labradore trees proper, I says.'
More than once I heard currency, if not credence, given to the statement
that the reason why the bull's-eye was so hard to hit in one of our
running-deer rifle matches was that we had previously charmed the
target. If a woman sees a hare without cutting out and keeping a portion
of the dress she is then wearing, her child will be born with a harelip.
When stripping a patient for examination, I noticed that he removed from
his neck what appeared to be a very large scapular. I asked him what it
could be. It was a haddock's fin-bone—a charm against rheumatism. The
peculiarity of the fin consists in the fact that the fish must be taken
from the water and the fin cut out before the animal touches anything
whatever, especially the boat. Anyone who has seen a trawl hauled knows
how difficult a task this would be, with the jumping, squirming fish to
cope with, and a host of naked hooks tossing around.
Protestant and Catholic alike often sew up bits of paper, with prayers
written on them, in little sacks that are worn around the neck as an
amulet; and green worsted tied around the wrist is believed by many to
be a never-failing cure for haemorrhage. Friends were at first surprised
when I began commending the brass chains worn round the wrist 'against
Water Pups,' which are sea boils. The chains keep the dirty oilskin
sleeve from touching and poisoning the skin.
We were much surprised one day to notice a family moving their house in
the middle of the fishing season, especially when we learned the reason.
It was that a spirit had appropriated their dwelling by night, so they
moved by day, when the spirit was asleep, to another spot. More than
once I have been called in to the case of a baby suffering from
ophthalmia, only when blowing sugar in its eyes had failed to cure it.
Afterwards one wanted the lovely name 'Ophthalmia' for the next baby.
A colleague of mine was visiting on his winter rounds in a delightful
village some forty miles south of St. Anthony Hospital. The 'swiles'
(seals) had 'stuck in,' and all hands were out on the ice, eager to
capture their share of these valuable animals. But snow-blindness had
attacked the men and rendered them utterly unable to profit by their
good fortune. The doctor's clinic was long and busy that night. The
following morning he was amazed to see many of his erstwhile patients
wending their way seawards, each with one eye only treated by his
prescription. The other (for safety's sake) was being doctored after the
long-accepted methods of the village—tansy poultices and sugar being
the favourites. The consensus of opinion obviously was that the risk was
too great to venture both eyes at once on the doubtful altar of modern
medicine.
On the contrary, I could wish all clergy could enjoy the stimulus of the
following: although there have been clergymen of the Church of England
and Methodist denominations on the Coast for many years past—devoted
and self-sacrificing men who have done most unselfish work—still, their
visits must be infrequent. One of them told me in North Newfoundland
that, one day as he happened to pass through a little village with his
dog-team on his way south, the man of one house ran out and asked him to
come in.
'Sorry, I have no time,' he replied.
'Well, just come in at the front door and out at the back, so we can say
that a minister has been in the house,' the fisherman answered.
Moreover, he meant it.
Every summer some twenty thousand fishermen travel down north in
schooners as soon as ever the ice breaks sufficiently to allow them to
get along. They are the 'Labrador fishermen,' and they come from South
Newfoundland, from Nova Scotia, from Gloucester, and even Boston. Some
Newfoundlanders take their families down and leave them in summer tilts
on the land near the fishing grounds during the season. When fall comes,
they pick them up again and start for their winter homes in the south,
leaving only a few hundreds of scattered 'Liveyeres' in possession of
the Labrador.
Even to-day, to the least fastidious, our conditions of travel leave
much to be desired. The coastal steamers are packed far beyond their
sleeping or sitting capacity. As the little ship noses her way into some
picturesque harbour and blows a lusty warning of her approach, small
boats are seen putting off from the shore and rowing or sculling toward
her with most indecorous rapidity. Lean over the rail for a minute with
me, and watch the freight being unloaded into one of these bobbing
little craft. The hatch of the steamer is opened, a most unmusical winch
commences operations—and a sewing machine emerges _de profundis_. This
is swung giddily out over the sea by the crane and dropped on the
thwarts of a waiting punt. One shudders to think of the probably fatal
shock received by the vertebrae of that machine. One's sympathies,
however, are almost immediately enlisted in the interest and fortunes of
a young and voiceful pig, which, poised in the blue, unwillingly
experiences for the moment the fate of the coffin of the Prophet. Great
shouting ensues as a baby is carried down the ship's ladder and
deposited in the rocking boat. A bag of beans, of the variety known as
haricot, is the next candidate. A small hole has been torn in a corner
of the burlap sack, out of which trickles a white and ominous stream.
The last article to join the galaxy is a tub of butter. By a slight
mischance the tub has 'burst abroad,' and the butter, a golden and
gleaming mass, with unexpected consideration, having escaped the
ministrations of the winch, is passed from one pair of fishy hands to
another, till it finds a resting-place by the side of the now quiescent
pig.
The cheerful kindliness and capability of the captain, the crew, and the
passengers, on whatever boat you may chance to travel, pervades the
whole ship, and makes one forget any slight discomfort in a justifiable
pride that as an Anglo-Saxon one can claim kinship to these 'Vikings of
to-day.' For the first vast improvement in these boats, everyone owes a
big debt to Messrs. Bowring and family. Their s.s. _Prospero_ was a very
real missionary when they first ventured to send her 'Down North.'
The hospitality of the people is unstinted and beautiful. They will turn
out of their beds at any time to make a stranger comfortable, and offer
him their last crust into the bargain, without ever expecting or asking
a penny of recompense. But here, as all the world over, the sublime and
the ridiculous go hand in hand. On one of my dog trips the first winter
which I spent at St. Anthony, the bench on which I slept was also the
top of the box used for hens. This would have made little difference to
me, but unfortunately it contained a youthful and vigorous rooster,
which, mistaking the arrival of so many visitors for some strange herald
of morning, proceeded every half-hour to salute it with a premature and
misdirected zeal, utterly incompatible with repose just above his head.
It was possible to reach through the bars and suggest better things to
him; but owing to the perversity which exists in most things, one
invariably captured a drowsy hen, while the more active offender eluded
one with ease.
The number of cases of tuberculosis, anaemia, and dyspepsia, of
beri-beri and scurvy, all largely attributable to poverty of diet, was
in those days very great; and the relative poverty, even compared with
that of the countries which I have been privileged to visit, was
piteous. The solution of evolutionary problems does not, however, lie in
removing a people from their environment, but in trying to adapt the
environment and the people to one another.
A visit to one house on the French shore I shall not easily forget. A
handsome lad of sixteen years had hip disease, and lay dying. The bed,
the house, and everything in it were full of vermin, and the poor boy
had not been washed since he took to bed three or four months before.
With the help of a clergyman who was travelling with me at the time, the
lad was chloroformed and washed and his wounds dressed. We then burned
the bedding. I learned by bitter experience not to trust that to anyone.
We provided him with fresh garments and put him into a clean bed. The
people's explanation was that he was in too much pain to be touched.
Having seen the gratitude in his face, we left what we could for him and
pursued our way. Had he not been so far gone, we should have taken him
to the hospital, but he could not possibly have then survived the
journey.
Although then a diary often seemed an unnecessary expenditure of effort
in an already overcrowded day, one now values the records of these early
days of one's life on the Coast. In my notebook for 1895 I find the
following:
'The desolation of Labrador at this time is easy to understand. No
Newfoundlanders are left north of us; not a vessel in sight anywhere.
The ground is all under snow, and everything caught over with ice except
the sea. I must describe one house, for it seems a marvel that any man
could live in it all winter, much less women and children. It is ten
feet by twenty, one storey high, made of mud and boards, with half a
partition to divide bedroom from the sitting-room kitchen. If one adds a
small porch filled with dirty, half-starved dogs and refuse of every
kind, an ancient and dilapidated stove in the sitting part of the house,
two wooden benches against the walls, and two boarded-up beds, one has a
fairly accurate description of the furnishings. Inside are fourteen
persons, sleeping there, at any rate for a night or two. The ordinary
regular family of a man and wife and four girls is to be increased this
winter by the man's brother, his wife, and four boys from twelve months
to seven years of age. His brother has "handy enough flour," but no tea
or molasses. The owner is looking after Newfoundland Fishing Rooms, for
which he gets flour, tea, molasses, and firewood for the winter. The
people assure me that one man, who was aboard the _Strathcona_ last fall
just as we were going south, starved to death, and many more were just
able to hold out till spring. The man who died, they tell me, ate his
only dog as his last resource.'
I sent one day a barrel of flour and some molasses to a poor widow with
seven children at Stag Islands. She was starving, even in summer. She
was just eating fish, which she and her eldest girl, a pathetic half-fed
little Anglo-Saxon, caught; and all were drinking water—no flour, no
tea, nothing. Two winters before she and her eldest girl sawed up three
thousand feet of planking to keep 'the wolf' from the other little ones.
The plucky girl managed the boat and fished in summer, drove the dogs
and _komatik_ and did all the shooting for which they could afford
powder in winter. To let me better help such cases, I started a
Discretionary Fund. They called for immediate help, an SOS no one with a
human heart wants to resist. That fund will live as long as I do and, I
pray God, long after I am gone on.
To those who claim that Labrador is a land of plenty, I would offer the
following incident: At Holton on a certain Sunday morning the leader of
the church services came aboard the hospital steamer and asked me for a
Bible. Some sacrilegious pigs which had been brought down to fatten on
the fish, driven to the verge of starvation by the scarcity of that
article, had broken into the church illicitly one night, and had
actually torn up and eaten the Bible. In reply to inquiry I gave it as
my opinion that it would be no sin to eat the pork of the erring
quadrupeds.
Once, when I was cruising on the far North Labrador Coast, I anchored
between two desolate islands some distance out in the Atlantic, a
locality which in those days was frequented by many fishing craft. My
anchors were scarcely down when a boat from a small Welsh brigantine
came aboard, and asked me to go at once and see a dying girl. She proved
to be the only woman on the whole island among a host of men, and was
servant in one of the tiny summer fishing huts, cooking and mending for
the men, and helping with the fish when required. I found her in a rude
bunk in a dark corner of the shack. She was eighteen, and even by the
dim light of my lantern and in contrast with the sordid surroundings, I
could see that she was very handsome. A brief examination convinced me
that she was dying. The tender-hearted old captain, whose aid had been
called in as the only man 'with a doctor's box,' and therefore felt to
be better qualified to use it than others, was heart-broken. He had
pronounced the case to be typhoid, to be dangerous and contagious, and
had wisely ordered the fisherman, who was handling food for human
consumption, to leave him to deal with the case alone. He confessed at
once that he had limited his attentions to feeding her; and, though
helpless for over a fortnight and at times unconscious, the patient had
not once been washed or the bed changed. The result, even with my
experience, appalled me. But while there is life in a young patient
there is always hope, and we at once set to work on our Augean task. By
the strangest coincidence it was an inky dark night outside, with a low
fog hanging over the water, and the big trap boat, with a crew of some
six men, among them the skipper's sons, had been missing since morning.
The white-haired skipper had stayed home out of sympathy for his servant
girl, and his mind was torn asunder by anxiety for the girl and his fear
for his boys.
[Illustration: ORPHANS SAWING THEIR WINTER WOOD]
[Illustration: ORPHANS IN WINTER DRESS]
Finally, the old captain and I were through with the hardest part of our
work. We had new bedding on the bed and the patient clean and sleeping
quietly. Still the boat and its precious complement did not come. Every
few minutes the skipper would go out and listen and stare into the
darkness. The girl's heart suddenly failed, and, about midnight, she
passed away. The captain and I decided that the best thing to do was to
burn everything—and, in order to avoid publicity, to do it at once. So
having laboriously carried it all out on to the edge of the cliff, we
set a light to the pile, and quite unintentionally began sending out
great streams of light into the darkness over the waters away down below
us, and actually giving the long-awaited signal to the missing boat. Her
crew worked their way through the fog to life and safety by means of the
blazing, poor, discarded 'properties' of the soul preceding us to our
last port also.
Although our work has lain almost entirely among the white population,
still it has been our privilege occasionally to come in contact with the
native races and to render them such services, medical or otherwise, as
lay within our power. Our doctor at Harrington on the Canadian Labrador
is incidentally also Medical Indian Agent of the Canadian Government.
Once, when my own boat was anchored in Davis Inlet, a band of roving
Indians had come to the post for barter and supplies. Our steamer was a
source of great interest to them. Our steam whistle they would gladly
have purchased, after they had mastered their first fears. At night we
showed them some distress rockets and some red and blue port flares. The
way those Indians fled from the port flares was really amusing, and no
one enjoyed it more than they did, for the shouting and laughter, after
they had picked themselves out of the scuppers, where they had been
rolling on top of one another, wakened the very hills with their echoes.
Next morning one lonely-looking brave came on board, and explained to me
by signs and grunts that during the entertainment a white counter, or
Hudson's Bay dollar, had rolled out of the lining of his hat into our
wood pile. An elaborate search failed to reveal its whereabouts, but, as
there was no reason to doubt him, I decided to make up the loss to him
out of our clothes-bag. You can trust his word absolutely. Fortunately,
a gorgeous old purple rowing blazer came readily to hand, and with this
and a woollen helmet, both of which he put on at once, the poor fellow
was more than satisfied. Indeed, on the wharf he was the envy of the
whole band.
We had at the time, among the garments on board, three not exactly
suited to the white settlers, so I told the agent to let the Indians
have a rifle-shooting match for them. They were a fox-huntsman's red
broadcloth tail-coat of a cousin of mine with all the glory of gilt
buttons, a rather dilapidated red golf blazer, and a cavalryman's white
'Eton coat' with silver buttons and the coat of arms on. Words fail me
to paint the elation of the winner of the fox-hunting coat; while the
wearer of the cavalry mess jacket was not the least bit daunted by the
fact that when he got it on he could hardly breathe. I must say that he
wore it over a deerskin _kossak_, which is not the custom of cavalrymen,
I am led to believe.
The coast-line from Ramah to Cape Chidley is just under one hundred
miles, and on it live a few scattered Eskimo hunters. It has been
claimed that a larger race of Eskimos called 'Tunits,' to whom the
present race were slaves, used to be on this section of the Coast. At
Nakvak there are remains of old stone houses suggesting the possibility
of truth in this. There have been among the Eskimos two terrible
epidemics of influenza. Like all primitive peoples, they had no immunity
to the disease, and the suffering and mortality were very high. It was a
pathetic sight as the lighter received its load of rude coffins from the
wharf, with all the kindly little people gathered to tow them to their
last resting-place in the shallow sand at the end of the inlet. The
first time they had to bury ten coffins in each grave. It seemed more
the sequence of a battle than of a summer sickness in Labrador.
A few million years ago, which is comparatively recently for Labrador,
some fresh writhing of Mother Earth's crust forced into the roots of the
really ancient coastal mountain range of Labrador with incredible
pressure vast quantities of new molten minerals, which thus had to cool
down inside it. Since then the covering mountain has been worn off all
except the stumps, and the intruder, called Gabbro, everywhere shows. In
this odd way, the major part of the earth crust of the country is called
Labradorite. When polished, it breaks up the sunlight and flashes back
all the colours of the rainbow, especially the bright blues and purples.
Recently, a number of guests at the Duke of Westminster's home were
being shown a collection of small tables with semi-precious stone
tops—such as jade. Each guest picked out the same table as the most
beautiful, because it was 'alive.' The pieces, fitted to the centre in
wedges, simply danced in the sunlight. The Duke had paid a thousand
pounds for it. The table was Labradorite. Unfortunately, it is only in a
few places that the marvellous arrangement of its crystals is just right
for breaking up the sunlight. Many requests for specimens reached me,
and, as it offered to return enough to feed an extra orphan or two, we
despatched a crew of Princeton 'wops' north to procure a few barrelfuls.
They were sent to an island near Nain, which a friend of mine had
located as affording the best and most generous supply.
Apparently the boys went off to the island, which is entirely out of the
way of any visitors, without anyone knowing about their departure. They
pulled the boat up on the beach, camped, and retired for the night. A
big tide was blown up by the heavy wind during the night, and next
morning to their horror they found that their boat had been carried
away. There was no hope of escape whatever. There is no vegetation on
that small island. The water is far too cold to swim to an adjoining
island, where even then they would have been no better off. Death
literally stared them in the face.
Nothing but a miracle could save them, but the miracle happened! When
the boys awoke next morning the wind had changed. The current had
eddied. The boat—filled with water, it is true, but the boat—lay
washed up on the shore of the one tiny beach of their island.
The flora and fauna of the country are so varied and exquisite that one
wonders why the world of science has so largely passed us by. Not only
the ethnologist and botanist, but the archaeologist as well, can reap a
harvest for his labours here. Many relics of a recent stone age still
exist. I have had brought to me stone saucepans, lamps, knives,
arrowheads, etc., taken from old graves. It is the Eskimo custom to
entomb with the dead man every possession which he might want hereafter,
the idea being that the spirit of the implement accompanies the man's
spirit.
Years ago in Germany, when the Socialists were wearing beards and
moustaches, all respectable people used to shave. Therefore, the
Moravians, being Germans, insisted on the Eskimos shaving, as they did
themselves. One result was that at one store a stock of razors
accumulated, for the Eskimos have practically no hair to shave, and it
was inhuman to practise the habit in the Arctic climate of Labrador.
Some Eskimos had promised to bring me some stone cooking-pots if I would
furnish something to put into the graves in their place. A batch of
razors satisfied them to perfection. As I pass by, the thought of a
group of old Eskimo warriors sitting on those graves trying to shave
makes me wish my eyes might be opened to see them, as were Elisha's of
old.
Relics of ancient whaling establishments, possibly early Basque, have
been found in plenty at one village, while even to-day the trapper there
needing a runner or shoe for his _komatik_ can always hook up a whale's
jaw or rib from the mud of the harbour. Relics of rovers of the sea, who
sought shelter on this uncharted coast with its million islands, are
still to be found. A friend of mine was one day looking from his boat
into the deep, narrow channel in front of his house when he perceived
some strange object in the mud. He raised it, and found a long brass
cannon, which now stands on the rocks near his house.
It has long been known that Labrador possesses mineral deposits, which
in the future may prove of great value, but difficulties of
communication, transportation, and mining operations have left these
sources of wealth practically untouched, even until to-day. It is the
production of paper from wood pulp, the development of hydro-electric
power, wireless, aeroplane communication, electrical prospecting which
is bringing to the front this land, so rich in forests and water-power.
We now know, both from the reports of exploring parties and from aerial
surveys, that the hinterland of Labrador possesses huge preserves of
timber, unlimited water-power from her tremendous falls, and, in
addition, the potentiality of minerals indicated by the nature of her
rock formation, it being the same as the Canadian Shield which only a
little farther west has yielded the largest gold and silver, nickel and
copper deposits in the world. The mighty Hamilton River pierces the
heart of Labrador, and at Grand Falls takes a leap of three hundred and
sixteen feet into the canyon below—a jump twice the height of far-famed
Niagara. It is narrower than Niagara, but our experienced aeronaut
flying over the falls said, 'These falls make Niagara look so shallow
from above!'
It was a far cry from Labrador to 'civilization.' All the same, we
already are being permitted to see on our northern coast the dawn of a
new day; for just as Canada, that once useless 'Lady of the Snows,' has
come to her own, just as Alaska, stigmatized but a short while past as
'Seward's Folly,' has claimed her place among the servants of man, so
Labrador, a sleeping, chilly giant, is stirring, and her forests already
ring with the tools of surveyor and engineer.
With this new vision of provision for daily needs, the life of our hardy
Anglo-Saxon fishermen of the Northland promises all the physical and
material satisfaction which the labour of man's hands and the sweat of
man's brow can afford. Meanwhile, the joy of personal achievement is
infinitely increased by the challenge flung there to every talent any
man possesses—a greater joy far than the manufactured pleasures with
which so many vainly seek in civilization to pass away the short day of
life.
CHAPTER VIII
THE QUEST OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES
THE end of the second year had come. It was time to return to England.
Eagerly we looked forward to it. Money was badly needed for the new
hospitals—they had scarcely any equipment. We all hated to go and ask
for it. It was infinitely more sacrifice to two young doctors than all
low temperatures, high seas, and hard work put together. Yet what
difference is there, asking people to lend you a hand, or, say, in
war-time to lend you a gun, and lending you monetary help? Christ asked
complete strangers to die for Him, because He knew what a lot more good
there is in men than we believe. Anyhow, it was the more venturesome of
the two courses. So my young Australian colleague and I decided to visit
Canada and try to raise funds, as our problems were obviously assuming
larger proportions than the Society in England felt they could finance.
It was to be our own affair, and we had only a limited amount of money
for the venture. Also, it was our first visit to Canada, and we knew
nothing about it and no one in it. We carried credentials, however, from
the Secretary of State and other reputable persons. If we had had
experience as commercial travellers, this might have been child's play.
But our education had been in an English school and university; and when
finally we sat at breakfast at a Halifax hotel we felt exactly like two
fish out of water.
Such success as we obtained subsequently I attribute largely to what
then seemed to me my colleague's 'consecrated cheek.' He insisted that
we should call on the most prominent persons at once, the Prime
Minister, the General in charge of the garrison, the Presidents of the
Board of Trade and the University, the Governor of the Province, and all
the leading clergymen. There have been times when I have hesitated about
getting my anchors for sea, when the barometer was falling, the wind in,
and a fog-bank on the horizon, but even now, years after, I still recall
my reluctance to face that ordeal. But, as it is generally, the
obstacles were largely in one's own mind, and the kindness which we
received left me entirely overwhelmed. Friends formed a regular
committee to keep a couple of cots going in our hospital and to collect
supplies; and then passed us on to Montreal with introductions and
endorsements.
By the time we reached Montreal, our funds were getting low. But my
friend insisted that we must engage first-class accommodation, even
though we had learnt to love 'roughing it,' and even if it should
prevent our travelling farther west. One result was that reporters
insisted on interviewing him as to the purpose of an Australian coming
to Montreal; and I was startled to see a long account, which he had
jokingly given them, published in the morning papers, stating his
purpose was to materialize the All-Red Line and arrange closer relations
between Australia and Canada. According to his report my object was to
inspect my ranch in Alberta. He woke me up next morning by bubbling with
joy over the morning paper.
Our most important interview was with Lord Strathcona. He was President
of the Hudson's Bay Company, the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and the Bank
of Montreal. As a poor Scotch lad, named Donald Smith, he had lived for
thirteen years of his early life in Labrador. There he had found a wife
and there his daughter was born. From the very first he was thoroughly
interested in our work, and all through the years until his death in
1914 his support was maintained, so that almost the very day he died, my
wife and I were actually due to visit him in his country home near
London. At his advice we hired the best hall and advertised Sir Donald
as our chairman. To save expense my colleague acted in the ticket-box.
When Sir Donald came along, not having seen him previously, the doctor
insisted on collecting fifty cents from him as from the rest. When Sir
Donald strongly protested that he was our chairman, he merely replied
that several others had made the same remark. Everyone in the city knew
Sir Donald; and when the matter was explained to him in the greenroom he
was thoroughly pleased with our business-like attitude. As we had never
seen Canada, he insisted that we must take a holiday and go as far west
as British Columbia. All of this he not only arranged freely for us, but
even saw to such details as that we should ride on the engine through
the Rocky Mountains, and be entertained at his home, called 'Silver
Heights,' while in Winnipeg. It was during this trip that I visited
'Grenfell Town,' a queer little place called after Pascoe Grenfell, of
the Bank of England. The marvel of the place to me was the thousands and
thousands of acres of splendid farmland on which no one lived.
Lord Strathcona later presented the Mission with a fine little steamer,
the _Sir Donald_, purchased and equipped at his expense through the
Committee in Montreal.
We went back to England very well satisfied with our work; and I
returned the following year and steamed the _Sir Donald_ from Montreal
down the St. Lawrence River and the Gulf to Battle Harbour, where our
schooner, which had sailed again from England with doctors, nurses, and
supplies, was to meet me. We had made a fine voyage, visiting all along
the coast as we journeyed, and had turned in from sea through the last
'run,' or passage between islands. We had polished our brass-work,
cleaned up our decks, hoisted our flags, all that we might make a
triumphant entry on our arrival a few minutes later—when suddenly,
Burr—Bur-r—Burr . . . we rose, staggered, and fell over on a horrible
submerged shoal!!! Our side was gored, our propeller and shaft gone, our
keel badly splintered, and the ship left high and dry!!! When we
realized the dreadful position into which we had put ourselves, we rowed
ashore to the nearest island, walked three or four miles over hill and
bog, and from there got a fisherman with a boat to put us over to Battle
Harbour Island. The good ship _Albert_ lay at anchor in the harbour. Our
new colleagues and old friends were all impatiently waiting so see our
fine new steamer speed in with all her flags up—when instead, two
bedraggled-looking tramps, crestfallen almost to weeping, literally
crept in.
A crowd at once went round in boats with a museum of implements. They
soon had our boat off, and our plucky schooner took her in tow all the
three hundred miles to the nearest dry-dock at St. John's.
As Sir Thomas Roddick, of Montreal, an old Newfoundlander, had presented
us with a splendid twenty-foot jolly-boat, rigged with lugsail and
centre boom, I cruised north in this to Eskimo Bay, harbouring at nights
if possible, getting a local pilot when I could, and once being taken
bodily on board, craft and all, by a big friendly fishing schooner. I
was so dependent on the settlers and fishermen for food and hospitality
that I learned to know them as would otherwise have been impossible. Far
the best road to a seaman's heart is to let him do something for you.
From the position of a tight corner, needing help and hospitality from
entire strangers, one learns how large are the hearts and homes of those
who live next to want themselves. I thought I knew the Labrador people
before (and among such I include the Hudson's Bay traders and the
Newfoundland fishermen); that summer made me love them. I could not help
feeling how much more sacrifice they gladly and freely made for me than
I should have dreamed of doing for them had they come as visitors to my
house in London. I have sailed the seas in ocean greyhounds, and in
floating palaces, and in steam yachts, but better than any other voyage
I love to dwell on the memories of that summer, cruising the Labrador in
a twenty-footer.
The gallant little _Sir Donald_ did herself every credit the following
year, and we not only visited the Coast as far north as Cape Chidley,
but explored the narrow channel which runs through the land into Ungava
Bay, and placed Cape Chidley itself on a detached island, and located
points of vantage for the sailing vessels on uncharted sections, where
the Government later erected marks for their guidance.
There were a great many fishing schooners far north that season, and the
keen pleasures of exploring a truly marvellous coast, practically
uncharted and unknown, were redeemed from the reproach of selfishness by
the numerous opportunities for service to one's fellow-men.
In the early part of one summer we were eleven days stuck in an
ice-field; and while there the huge mail steamer broke her propeller,
and a boat was sent up to us through the ice to ask for our help. The
truck on my mastheads was just up to her deck. Nosing our way through
the heavy pans of ice gave us a lot of trouble, but we managed to tow
the steamer into safety. On board were the superintendent of the
Moravian Missions and his wife. Not being seamen, they were specially
grateful. The great tub had rolled about so in the Atlantic swell that
the big ice-pans nearly came on deck. My dainty little steamer took no
notice of anything, and found her way among the pans like Agag 'treading
delicately.' We had five hours' hard pulling, however, and kept men out
all the time dodging from pan to pan, as they cleared the tow-line, or
carried it round the higher pinnacles of ice on which it kept getting
caught.
There is one especially charming feature about a little church at Indian
Tickle. It stands in such a position that you can see it as you come
from the north, miles away from the harbour entrance, off which lies an
unmarked dangerous reef that has brought disaster to many poor vessels.
There are no lights to guide sailors on this coast at all, and yet,
during September, October, and November, three of the most dangerous
months in the year, hundreds of schooners and thousands of men, women,
and children were coming into, or passing through, this harbour on their
way to the southward. By a nice arrangement the little east window
pointed to the north—if that is not Irish—and two large bracket lamps
could be turned on a pivot, so that the lamps and their reflectors threw
a light out to sea. The good planter, at his own expense, maintained a
light there on stormy or dark nights, and steering straight for it
brings one to safety. In the _Strathcona_ one fall, we fought out a
heavy gale off this very reef; all the others, eleven in number, were
lost with all their gear.
That summer, on going aboard a schooner which had signalled us for help,
we had found a young man with the globe of one eye ruptured by a gun
accident, in great pain, and in danger of losing the other eye
sympathetically. Having excised the globe, we allowed him to go back
later to his vessel, intensely grateful, but full of apprehension as to
'how his girl would regard him' on his return south. It so happened that
we had had a gift of false eyes, and we therefore told him to call in at
the hospital on his way home and take his chance on getting a blue one.
While walking over the hill near Battle Harbour Hospital that fall, I
ran into a crowd of young fishermen, whose schooner was wind-bound in
the harbour, and who had been into the country for an hour's trouting.
One asked me to look at his eye, as something was wrong with it. Being
in a hurry, I simply remarked, 'Come to hospital, and I'll examine it
for you'; whereupon he burst into a merry laugh. 'Why, Doctor, I'm the
boy whose eye you removed. This is the glass one you promised. Do you
think it will suit her?' I did—and it did.
Later, I was called on board a large schooner off Mugford Tickle, far
beyond the visits of any mails. There were two young girls on board
doing the cooking and cleaning, as was the wont in Newfoundland vessels.
One, alas, was seriously ill, having three days previously given birth
to a premature child, and having lain absolutely untouched and helpless,
with only a crew of kind but strange men anywhere near. Rolling her up
in blankets, we transferred her to the _Sir Donald_, and steamed for the
nearest Moravian station. Here the necessary treatment was possible, and
when we left a fortnight later for the south, a Moravian's goodwife
accompanied us as nurse. The girl, however, had no wish to live. 'I want
to die, Doctor; I can never go home again.' Her physical troubles had
abated, but her mind was made up to die, and this, in spite of all our
care, she did a few days later. The pathos of the scene as we rowed the
poor child's body ashore for interment on a rocky and lonely headland,
looking out over the great Atlantic, wrapped simply in the flag of her
country, will never be forgotten by any of us—the silent, but
unanswerable, reproach on man's utter selfishness. Many such thoughts
must rise to the memory of the general practitioner. These opportunities
of doing more for the patients than simply patching up their poor bodies
are opportunities which are a real reward for the art of healing. Some
years later, I revisited the grave of this poor girl, marked by the
wooden cross which we had then put up, and bearing the simple
inscription:
SUZANNE
Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee.
Again our cruise lasted till late into November, without our even
realizing the fact that snow was on the ground. Indeed, the ponds were
all frozen and we enjoyed drives with dog-teams on the land before we
had finished our work on the sea. We had scarcely left Flowers Cove and
were just burying our little steamer—loaded to the utmost capacity with
wood, cut in return for winter clothing—in the dense fog which so often
maintains in the Straits, and were rounding the outer end of the hidden
ledges which jut out half a mile from shore, when a huge trans-Atlantic
steamer, without a moment's warning, loomed right over our stern. We
instantly put down our helm and scuttled out of the way to avoid the
wash, and held our breath as the great steamer dashed by at twenty knots
an hour, between us and the hidden shoal. She altered her helm as she
did so, no doubt catching her first sight of the lighthouse as she
emerged from the fog-bank, but, as it was, she must have passed within a
few feet of her doom. With our hearts in our mouths, we expected
momentarily to see her dash herself to pieces. Then she passed out of
sight once more, her light-hearted passengers no doubt unconscious that
they had been looking any danger in the face.
Henley, or Château, where the British had erected a fort to defend it
against the French, was our last port of call that season. We made an
attempt to cross the Straits, but sea and wind caught us half-way and
forced us to run back, this time in thick fog. The Straits' current had
carried us a few miles in the meanwhile—which way we did not know—and
the land, hard to make out as it was in the fog, was white with snow.
However, with the storm increasing and the long dark night ahead, we
took a sporting chance and ran direct in on the cliffs. Suddenly we saw
a rock on our bow and a sheer precipice ahead, and instantly twisted
round on our heel, and shot between the two, for we knew where we were,
as that is the only rock like that on a coast-line of twenty miles of
cliffs. But there really is no room between it and the cliff!!
All along the Coast that year we noticed a change of attitude toward
professional medical aid. Confidence in the wise woman, in the seventh
son and his 'wonderful' power, in the use of charms, had begun to waver.
The world talks still of a blind man made to see nineteen hundred years
ago; but even the 'hard-boiled' were beginning to be thrilled by the
tales of blind men made to see by 'these yere doctors.' One was one of
themselves, a man who for seventeen years had given up all hope; and two
others, old men, parted for years, and whose first occasion of seeing
again had revealed to them the fact that they were brothers.
One of my first operations, in spite of the great pain caused by a
tumour in the leg, had been refused, as the patient had religious
scruples against anaesthetics. But before we sailed, the lady persuaded
five good men and true to sit on her while the operation proceeded. It
was not a pleasant scene to witness, but it ended well, and all parties
were satisfied.
Now, indeed, the conversion of the Coast had proceeded so far that many
were pleading for a winter doctor. At first, we did not think it
feasible, but my colleague, Dr. Willway, finally volunteered to stay at
Battle Harbour. We loaded him up with all our spare assets against the
experiment, the hospital being but very ill-equipped for a sub-Arctic
winter. When the following summer we approached the Coast, it was with
real trepidation that I scanned the land for signs of my derelict
friend. We felt that he would be gravely altered at least, possibly
having grown hair all over his face. When at length a tanned, athletic
figure, neatly tonsured and barbered, at last leaped over our rail, all
our sympathy gave way to jealousy.
One detail, however, had gone wrong. We had anchored our beautiful _Sir
Donald_ in his care in a harbour off the long bay on the shores of which
he was wintering. He had seen her once or twice in her ice prison, but
when he came to look for her in the spring, she had mysteriously
disappeared. The ice was there still. There was not a vestige of the
wreckage. She must have sunk and the hole frozen up. Yet an extended
period of 'creeping' the bottom with drags and grapples had revealed
nothing, and, anyhow, the water not being deep, her masts should have
been easily visible. It was not till some time later that we heard that
our trusty craft had been picked up some three hundred miles to the
southward and westward, well out in a heavy ice-pack, and right in among
a big patch of seals, away off in the Atlantic Ocean. The whole of the
bay ice had evidently gone out together, taking the ship with it; and
the bay had then neatly frozen over again. The seal hunters from the
S.S. _Ranger_ laughingly assured me that they found a patch of old
'swiles' having tea in the cabin. They passed her a friendly rope, and
she at length felt the life of the rolling wave beneath her once more,
and soon lay safely ensconced in the harbour at St. John's. Here she was
sold by auction, and part of the proceeds divided as her ransom to her
plucky salvors.
CHAPTER IX
WHITE THUNDER
IN Newfoundland the great sealing captains are the aristocrats of the
fishermen, and unquestionably are an unusually fine set of men. The work
calls for peculiar training in the hardest of schools, for great
self-reliance and resourcefulness, besides skill in handling ships and
men. A generation ago, the doyen of the fleet was Captain Samuel
Blandford. To-day it is a Captain Abraham Kane. 'Captain Sam' fired me
with tales of the hardships to be encountered and the opportunities and
need for a doctor among three hundred men hundreds of miles from
anywhere for a full two months. The result was a decision to return
early one year from my lecture tour and go out with the seal hunters.
At twelve o'clock of March 10, 1896, the good ship _Neptune_ hauled out
into the stream at St. John's Harbour, Newfoundland, preparatory to
weighing anchor for the seal fishery. The law allows no vessels to sail
before 2 _P.M._ on that day, under a penalty of four thousand dollars'
fine—nor may any seals be killed from the steamers until March 14, and
at no time on Sundays. The whole city of St. John's seemed to be
engrossed in the one absorbing topic of the seal fishery. It meant if
successful some fifty thousand pounds sterling at least to the Colony;
it meant bread for thousands of people; it meant for days and even weeks
past that men from far-away outports had been slowly collecting at the
capital, till the main street was peopled all day with anxious-looking
crowds, and all the wharves, where there was any chance of a 'berth' to
the ice, were fairly in a state of siege.
First let us go down to the dock and visit the ship before she starts.
She is a large barque-rigged vessel, with auxiliary steam, or rather one
should say a steamer with auxiliary sails. The first point that strikes
one is her massive build, her veritable bulldog look as she sits in the
water. Her sides are some eighteen inches thick, and sheathed and
resheathed with 'greenheart' to help her in battering the ice. Inside
she is ceiled with English oak and beech, so that her portholes look
like the arrow-slits of the windows of an old feudal castle. Her bow is
double-stemmed—shot with a broad band of iron—and the space of some
seventeen feet between the two stems solid with the choicest hardwoods.
Below decks every corner is adapted to some use. There are bags of
flour, hard bread, and food for the crew of three hundred and twenty
men; five hundred tons of coal are in her bunkers for the hungry engine
in her battle with the ice-floe. The vessel carries only about eighteen
hundred gallons of water and the men use five hundred in a day. This,
however, is of little consequence, for a party each day brings back
plenty of ice, which is excellent drinking after being boiled. This ice
is of very different qualities. Now it is 'slob' mixed with snow born on
the Newfoundland coast. This is called 'dirty ice' by the sealers. Even
it at times packs very thick and is hard to get through. Then there is
the clearer, heavy Arctic ice, with here and there huge icebergs frozen
in; and again one encounters the smoother, whiter variety known as
'whelping ice'—that is, the Arctic shore ice, born probably in
Labrador, on which the seals give birth to their pups.
The masters of watches are also called 'scunners'—they go up night and
day in the forebarrel to 'scun' the ship—that is, to find the way, or
leads, through the ice. This word comes from 'con' of the conning-tower
on a man-of-war.
Fortunately, this year a south-west wind had blown the ice a mile or so
offshore. Now all the men are on board. The vessels are in the stream.
The flags are up; the whistles are blowing. The hour of two approaches
at last, and a loud cheering, renewed again and again, intimates that
the first vessel is off, and the S.S. _Aurora_ comes up the harbour.
Cheers from the ships, the wharves, and the town answer her whistle,
and, closely followed by the S.S. _Neptune_ and S.S. _Windsor_, she
gallantly goes out, the leader of the sealing fleet for the year.
There have been two or three great disasters at the seal fishery, where
numbers of men, astray from their vessels in heavy snow blizzards on the
ice, have perished miserably. Sixteen fishermen were once out hunting
for seals on the frozen ice of Trinity Bay when the wind changed and
drove the ice offshore. When night came on, they realized their terrible
position and that, with a gale of wind blowing, they could not hope to
reach land in their small boats. Nothing but an awful death stared them
in the face, for in order to hunt over the ice men must be lightly clad,
so as to run and jump from piece to piece. Without fire, without food,
without sufficient clothing, exposed to the pitiless storm on the frozen
sea, they endured thirty-six hours without losing a life. Finally, they
dragged their boats ten miles over the ice to the land, where they
arrived at last more dead than alive.
It is the physical excitement of travelling over broken ice, tossing on
the bosom of the mighty ocean, with the skill and athletic qualities
which the work demands, that makes one love the voyage. Jumping from the
side of the ship as she goes along, scurrying and leaping from ice-pan
to ice-pan, and then having killed, 'sculped,' and pelted the seal, the
exciting return to the vessel! But it has its tragic side.
On this particular voyage we were lucky enough to come early into the
seals. From the conner's barrel, in which I spent a great deal of time,
we saw one morning black dots spread away in thousands all over the
ice-floes through which we were butting, ramming, and fighting our way.
All hands were over the side at once, and very soon patients began
needing a doctor. Here a cut, there a wrench or sprain, and later came
thirty or forty at a time with snow-blindness or conjunctivitis—very
painful and disabling, though not fatal to sight.
One morning we had been kept late relieving these various slight
ailments, and the men being mostly out on the ice made me think that
they were among the seals, so I started out alone as soon as I could
slip over the side to join them. This, however, I failed to do till late
in the afternoon, when the strong wind, which had kept the loose ice
packed together, dropped, and in less than no time it was all 'running
abroad.' The result of this is that one cannot get along except by
floating on one piece to another, and that is a slow process without
oars. It came on dark, and a dozen of us who had got together decided to
make for a large pan not far distant; but were obliged to give it up and
wait for the ship, which had long gone out of sight. To keep warm we
played leap-frog, caps, and hop, skip, and jump—at which some were very
proficient. We ate our sugar and oatmeal, mixed with some nice clear
snow; and then, shaving our wooden seal bat-handles and dipping them
into the fat of the animals which we had killed, we made a big blaze
periodically to attract the attention of the ship.
[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY SCHOOL]
[Illustration: ONE BUILDING OF THE LOCKWOOD SCHOOL AT CARTWRIGHT]
It was well into the night before we were picked up; and no sooner had
we climbed over the rail than the skipper came and gave us the best or
worst 'blowing-up' I ever received since my father spanked me. He told
me afterward that he was really so relieved by our safe return that he
was scarcely conscious of what he said. Indeed, any words which might
have been considered as 'unparliamentary,' he asked me to construe as
gratitude to God.
Our captain was a passenger on, and prospective captain of, the S.S.
_Tigris_ when she picked up those members of the ill-fated Polaris
expedition who had been five months on the ice-pans. He had gone below
from his watch and daylight was just breaking when the next watch came
and reported a boat and some people on a large pan, with the American
flag flying. A kayak came off, and Hans, an Eskimo, came alongside and
said, 'Ship lost. Captain gone.' Boats were immediately lowered, and
nineteen persons, including two women and one baby—born on the
ice-pan—came aboard amidst cheers renewed again and again. They had to
be washed and fed, cleaned and clothed. The two officers were invited to
live aft, and the remainder of the rescued party being pestered to death
by the sealing crew in the forecastle, it was decided to abandon the
sealing trip, and the brave explorers were carried to St. John's, the
American people eventually indemnifying the owners of the _Tigris_.
In hunting my patients, I started round with a book and pencil
accompanied by the steward carrying a candle and matches. The invalids
were distributed in the four holds—the after, the main, the forecastle,
and foretopgallant forecastle. I never went round without a bottle of
cocaine solution in my pocket for the snow-blind men, who suffered the
most excruciating pain, often rolling about and moaning as if in a kind
of frenzy. To them the cocaine gave wonderful relief. Very often I found
that I must miss one or even both holds on my first rounds, for the
ladders were gone and seals and coals were exchanging places in them
during the first part of the day. Once down, however, one shouts out,
'Is there anyone here?' No answer. Louder still, 'Is there anyone here?'
Perhaps a distant cough answers from some dark recess, and the steward
and I begin a search. Then we go round systematically, climbing over on
the barrels, searching under sacks, and poking into recesses, and after
all occasionally missing one or two in our search. It seems a
peculiarity about the men that though they will 'lie up,' they will not
always say anything about it. The holds were very damp and dirty, but
the men seemed to improve in health and fattened like the young seals.
It must have been the pork, doughs, and excellent fresh meat of the
seal. We had boiled or fried seal quite often with onions, and I must
say that it was excellent eating—far more palatable than the dried
codfish, which, when one has any ice-work, creates an intolerable
thirst.
The rats were making a huge noise one night, and a barrel man gave it as
his opinion that we should have a gale before long; but a glorious
sunshine came streaming down upon us next morning, and we had to decide
that rats were really no wiser than men.
On Sunday, when it is illegal to kill the seals, I had a good chance to
watch them. They came up, simply stared at the ship, now from sheer fat
rolling on their backs, and lying for a few seconds helpless, with tail
and flippers beating the air. These baby seals resemble nothing so much
as the South Sea parrot fish—that is, a complete round head, with
somewhere in the sphere two huge black dots for eyes and a similar one
for a nose. These three form the corners of a small triangle, and as for
the rest, except for the tail, one could not easily tell which was the
back and which the belly of a young white-coat—especially in stormy
weather. For it is a well-ascertained fact that Nature makes the
marvellous provision that in storm and snow they grow fattest and
fastest. I have marvelled greatly how it is possible for any hot-blooded
creature to enjoy so immensely this terribly cold water as do these old
seals. They paddle about, throw themselves on their backs, float and
puff out their breasts, flapping their flippers like fans over their
chests.
The heaving of the great pans, like battering-rams, against the sides of
the _Neptune_ made a woesome noise below decks. We were often glad of
the thirty-six inches of hardwood covering. Every now and then she
steamed ahead a little and pressed into the ice to prevent this. I tried
to climb on one of the many icebergs, but the heavy swell made it
dangerous. At every swell it rolled over and back some eight feet, and
as I watched it I understood how an iceberg goes to wind. For it acted
exactly like a steam plough, crashing down on to one large pan as it
rolled, and then, as it rolled back, lifting up another and smashing it
from beneath. A regular battle seemed to be going on, with weird sounds
of blows and groanings of the large masses of ice. Sometimes, as pieces
fell off, the water would rush up high on the side of the berg. For some
reason or other this berg had red-and-white streaks, and looked much
like an ornamental pudding.
On Sundays we 'laid up' and rested. I had taken a host of cheap
hymn-books with me, knowing the seamen's love for music, and many fine
songs we had sitting out on the decks on fine Sundays.
One Sunday morning some men came aboard and reported a wreck on the ice.
She got round the island, a wind offshore having cleared the ice from
the land. Three other vessels were behind her. Hardly, however, had she
got round when the northerly wind brought the ice back. The doomed ship
now lay between the main or fixed, frozen, shore ice and the immense
floe which was impelled by the north wind acting on its whole irregular
surface. The force was irresistible. The ship backed and butted and got
twenty yards into a nook on the main ice, and lay there helpless as an
infant. On swept the floe, crashed into the fixed ice, shattered its
edge, rose up out of water over it (which is called 'rafting'), forced
itself on the unfortunate ship, rose over her bulwarks, crushed in her
sides, and only by nipping her tightly avoided sinking her immediately.
Seeing that all was lost, her captain got the men and boats on to the
pans and took all they could save of food and clothes; but before he had
saved his own clothing the ice parted enough to let her through and she
sank like a stone, her masts catching and breaking in pieces as she
went. A sorrowful march for the shore now began over the ice, as the
three hundred men started for home, carrying as much as they could on
their backs. Many would have to face empty cupboards and hard times; all
would have days of walking and rowing and camping before they could get
home. One hundred miles would be the least they must travel, or two and
even three hundred for some, before they could reach their own villages.
Some of these poor fellows had walked nearly two hundred miles to get a
chance of going on the lost ship, impelled by hunger and necessity.
Of our Labrador harvests of the sea, after the cod, far the greatest is
this hair-seal fishery. One is more than ever convinced to-day that the
existence of this important source of wealth to Labrador is being
seriously depleted: the newer vessels are so powerful, the more recent
methods of discovering the whereabouts of the helpless baby seals by
regular aeroplane services and by the addition of wireless equipment
which enables vessels to direct one another to the 'patches of
seals'—that is, their nurseries, the skill of the captains and crews,
and finally the impossibility of enforcing laws calculated to prevent
losses of those seals killed and not hauled direct to the ship, but left
on the ice in great heaps—all these factors can in our opinion have but
one end. We who love the North can ill afford to fail to lodge our
protest about a course of action which means to our families another
serious loss of a chance to keep hunger from their doors. On this
particular voyage we brought home only twenty-three thousand seals, but
we must have killed nearly double that number.
The Government of the Colony, on the other hand, feels that it cannot
interfere to protect the young seals, since it considers the present
revenue derived from the seal fishery, the hoary antiquity of the
custom, and the interest vested in the industry are all too powerful to
be tampered with. Another turn of the wheel of fate may mean that the
increasing shortage in numbers and the lessened value of the seals in
this depression will automatically provide the only possible remedy.
In the spring of 1897, I was asked by the Council to sail to Iceland
with a view to opening work there, in response to a petition sent in to
the Board by the many long-liners and trawlers, who were just beginning
their vast fishery in those waters, especially from Hull and Grimsby. I
shall not soon forget our first view of the cliffs of the southern coast
of Iceland. We had called at Thorshavn in the Faroe group to see what we
could learn of the boats fishing near Rockall; but none were there at
the time. As we had no chronometers on our own boat, we were quite
unable to tell our longitude—a very much-needed bit of information, for
we had had fog for some days, and anyhow, none of us knew anything about
the coast. So, seeing one day a Grimsby boat fishing, I threw out my
kayak and went aboard. 'Where's Iceland, skipper?' I asked. 'Way there,'
said he, pointing with his thumb. 'Can you show me on your chart?' 'What
chart? I hasn't got no chart, and couldn't read it if I had, and I've
been coming this way for forty years now!'
Our cruise carried us all around the island—the larger part of our time
being spent off the Vestmann Islands and the mouth of Brede Bugt, the
large bay in which Reikyavik lies. It was off these islands that Eric
the Red threw his flaming sticks into the sea. The first brand which
alighted on the land directed him where to locate his new headquarters.
Reikyavik means 'smoking village,' so called from the vapours of the hot
streams which come out of the ground near by.
They were a simple, kindly, helpful people, living in a barren and
frigid country, with no trees except in one extreme corner. The cows
were literally fed on salt codfish and the tails of whales, while the
goats grazed on the roofs of the houses, where existed the only
available grass. There are dry, hard, and almost laval deposits over the
whole surface of the land which is not occupied by perpetual snow and
ice. The hot springs which abound in some regions only suggest a forlorn
effort on the part of Nature at the last moment to save the situation.
The one asset of the country is its fisheries, and of these the whale
and seal fisheries were practically handed over to the Norwegians; while
large French and English boats fell like wolves on the fish, which the
poor natives had no adequate means of securing for themselves.
It was now thought wise that I should take a holiday, and through the
kindness of my former chief, Sir Frederick Treves, then surgeon to the
King, whose life he had just been the means of saving, I found myself
for a time as his guest on the Scilly Islands. There we could divert our
minds from our various occupations, conjuring up visions of heroes like
Sir Cloudesley Shovel, who lost his life here, or of other scenes of
daring and of death that these beautiful isles out in the Atlantic have
witnessed. Nor did we need Charles Kingsley to paint for us again the
visit of Amyas Leigh and Salvation Yeo, for Sir Frederick, as his book,
_The Cradle of the Deep_, shows, was a past-master in buccaneer lore.
Besides that, we had with us his nephew, the famous novel-writer, A. E.
W. Mason.
Treves, with his insatiable energy, had organized a grand regatta to be
held at St. Mary's, at which the Governor of the Island, the Duke of
Wellington, and a host of visiting big-wigs were to be present. One
event advertised as a special attraction was a life-saving exhibition to
be given by local experts from the judges' stage opposite the grandstand
on the pier. This, Mason and I, being little more than ornaments in the
other events, decided to try and improve upon. Dressed as a somewhat
antiquated lady, just at the psychological moment Mason fell off the
lofty pier-head with a loud scream—whereupon, disguised as an aged
clergyman, wildly gesticulating and cramming my large beaver hat hard
down on my head, I dived in to rescue him. A real scene ensued. We were
dragged out with such energy that the lady lost her skirt, and on
reaching the pier fled for the boat-house clad only in a bonnet and
bodice over a bathing-suit. Although the local press wrote up the affair
as genuine, the secret somehow leaked out, and we had to make our bow at
the prize distribution the following evening.
On leaving England for one of these North Sea trips, I was delayed and
missed the hospital ship, so that later I was obliged to transfer to her
on the high seas from the little cutter which had kindly carried me out
to the fishing grounds. Friends had been good enough to give me several
little delicacies on my departure, and I had, moreover, some especially
cherished personal possessions which I desired to have with me on the
voyage. These choice treasures consisted of some eggs, a kayak, a kodak,
a chronometer, and a leg of mutton! After I was safely aboard the
Mission hospital ship, I found to my chagrin that, in my anxiety to
transfer the eggs, the kayak, the kodak, the chronometer, and especially
the leg of mutton, to the _Albert_, I had forgotten my personal
clothing. I appreciated the fact that a soaking meant a serious matter,
as I had to stay in my bunk until my things, which were drenched during
my passage in the small boat, were dry again.
While the skipper was at work in the tobacco locker one morning, he
heard a fisherman say that he had taken poison.
'Where did you get it?'
'I got it from the _Albert_.'
'Who gave it to you?'
'Skipper ——,' mentioning the skipper's name.
At this the skipper came out trembling, wondering what he had done wrong
now.
'Well, you see, it was this way. Our skipper had a bad leg, so, as I was
going aboard for some corf mixture, he just arst me to get him a drop of
something to rub in. Well, the skipper here gives me a bottle of red
liniment for our skipper's leg, and a big bottle of corf mixture for me,
but by mistake I drinks the liniment and gave the corf mixture to our
skipper to rub in his leg. I only found out that there yesterday, so I
knew I were poisoned, and I've been lying up ever since.'
'How long ago did you get the medicine?'
'About a fortnight.'
This man had got it into his head that he was poisoned, and nothing on
earth would persuade him to the contrary, so he was put to bed in the
hospital. For three meals he had nothing but water and a dose of castor
oil. By the next time dinner came round, the patient really began to
think he was on the mend, and remarked that 'he began to feel real
hungry-like.' It was just marvellous how much better he was before tea.
He went home to his old smack, cured, and greatly impressed with the
capacity of the medical profession.
The North Sea Mission fleet now numbered thirteen boats, had several
shore institutes around England, Scotland, and Ireland, and almost an
indefinite number of activities. Holland and France had followed our
lead, and the Œuvres de Mer of Paris had hospital schooners with both
the Iceland and Grand Bank fisheries. The banishment of the grog vessel
had been followed by greatly improved conditions in our English
fishermen's quarters, and I published one summer a list of over one
hundred drinking-saloons, along the quay-side at Great Yarmouth, that
had been closed up since we began, just for want of custom. Fishermen
are clannish folk, and even in public worship like to keep together.
Little chapels for worship sprang up specially for fishermen in many
places, and a real revolution, fully appreciated by owners, as well as
by wives and children, had begun, and has continued since.
CHAPTER X
ST. ANTHONY
IN June 1899, the hospital steamer _Strathcona_ was launched at
Dartmouth, England, the chief donor again being Lord Strathcona. She was
eighty feet long, small for Atlantic work, but larger than the vessel in
which Drake sailed round the world, or Dampier raided the Spanish Main,
or than the _Speedy_, which Earl Dundonald made the terror of the French
and Spanish.
In the fall I steamed her, an empty shell, round the South of England,
to fit her up at our Yarmouth wharf. Then, in company with a young
Oxford friend, I left for Labrador, crossing to Tilt Cove, Newfoundland,
direct from Swansea in an empty copper-ore tanker. On this I was rated
as purser at a salary of twenty-five cents for the trip. Most tramps can
roll, but an empty tanker going west against prevailing winds in the
roaring forties' can certainly give points to most of them. Her slippery
iron decks and my involuntary sideways excursions into the scuppers
still spring into my mind when a certain Psalm comes round in the Church
calendar, with its 'that thy footsteps slip not.'
At the end of that voyage, I wrote to my mother: 'We have just steamed
into Battle Harbour, and guns and flags gave us a welcome after our
three years' absence. The hospital was full and looked splendid. What a
change from the day, now seven years ago, when we first landed! What an
oasis for patients from the bleak rocks outside! I never thought to
remain long enough in this country to see it.'
There is always a romantic charm about cruising in the fall of the year
on the Labrador. The long nights and the occasional heavy gales add zest
to the shelter of the islands and the sense of safety in the harbours
and fjords. The tang of the air, the young ice that 'makes' every night,
and the fantastic midnight dances of the November auroras in the wintry
sky, all make one forget any worries or troubles.
Before leaving England, we had received letters from the North Coast of
Newfoundland, begging us again to include their shores in our visits,
and especially to establish a winter station at St. Anthony. The people
claimed, quite rightly, to be terribly poor. One man with a large family
whom I knew well, as he had acted as guide for me on hunting
expeditions, wrote, 'Come and start a hospital here if you can. My
family and I are starving.' This man was a keen hunter, and, with his
rickety old single-barrel, muzzle-loading gun, used to wander along far
out over the frozen sea, with an empty stomach as well, trying to get a
seal or a bird for his family. At last he shot a square flipper seal and
dragged it home over the ice. The rumour of his having killed it
preceded his arrival and even while skinning it a crowd of hungry men
were waiting for a share of the fur. Not that any was due them, but here
there is a delightful semi-community of goods.
I had once spent a fortnight at St. Anthony, having taken refuge there
in the _Princess May_ when I was supposed to be lost by those who were
cut off from communication with us. I had also looked in there each
summer to see a few patients. My original idea was to get a winter place
for our Indian Harbour staff, and I proposed opening up medical work at
St. Anthony each October when Indian Harbour closed, and closing in June
when navigation was reopened. So we hired a room in a trader's cottage,
used a glorified cupboard for a surgery, and engaged our old guide to
drive our dogs and pilot us.
North and south of the little village where we had settled were similar
other villages, around which we hoped to make many trips. This became
impossible, as patients collected in near-by houses, some of them
operative cases whom we felt we could not leave. So we selected a
motherly woman, whom we had learned that we could trust to obey orders,
and trained her as best we could with some of these sick people.
To me that first winter was one long delight. The dog-driving, the
intimate relationships with the people on whom one was so often
absolutely dependent, the opportunity to use for the real help of good
folk in distress the thousand and one small things which we had
learned—all these made the knowledge that we were shut off from the
outside world nothing but a pleasure.
Our dogs have a wonderful instinct for finding their way under
insurmountable difficulties, and they have often been the means of
saving the lives of their masters. Once I was driving a distance of
seventy miles across country. The path was untravelled for the winter,
and was only a direction, not being cut or blazed. The leading dog had
once been across the previous year with the doctor. The 'going' had then
been very bad; with snow and fog the journey had taken three days. A
large part of the way lay across wide, frozen lakes, and then through
woods. As I had never been that way before, I had to leave it to the
dog. Without a single fault, as far as we knew, she took us across, and
we accomplished the whole journey in twelve hours, including one and a
half hours for rest and lunch.
The real Labrador dog is a very slightly modified wolf. A good specimen
stands two feet four inches at the shoulder, measures over six feet six
inches from the tip of the tail, and will scale a hundred pounds. The
hair is thick and straight; the ears are pointed and stand directly up.
The large, bushy tail curves completely over on to the back, and is
always carried erect. The colour is generally tawny, like that of the
grey wolf, with no distinctive markings. The general resemblance to
wolves is so great that at Davis Inlet, where wolves come out frequently
in winter, the factor has seen his team mixed with a pack of wolves on
the beach in front of the door, and yet could not shoot, being unable to
distinguish one from the other. The Eskimo dog never barks, but howls
exactly like a wolf, in a sitting posture with the head upturned. The
Labrador wolf has never been known to kill a man, but during the years
that I have spent in the country I have known the dogs to kill two
children and one man, and to eat the body of another. Our dogs have
little or no fear, and, unlike the wolves, will unhesitatingly attack
even the largest polar bear.
No amount of dry cold can affect the dogs. At fifty degrees below zero,
a dog will lie out on the ice and sleep without danger of frostbite. He
may climb out of the sea with ice forming all over his fur, but he seems
not to mind one iota. Often his breath freezes over his face so that he
has to rub the coating off his eyes with his paws to enable him to see
the track.
The distance travelled and the average speed attained depends largely on
other factors than the dog power. We have covered seventy-five miles in
a day with comfort; we have done five with difficulty. Ordinary speed
would be six miles an hour, but once I did twenty-one miles in two hours
and a quarter over level ice. Sails can sometimes be used with advantage
on the _komatik_ as an adjunct.
Weight on your _komatik_ is a vital question, and, not knowing for what
you may be called upon, makes the outfitting an art. The sledge should
be eleven feet long. Its runners should be constructed of black spruce
grown in the Far North, where wood grows slowly and consequently is very
tough and yet quite light. The runners should be an inch thick, eleven
inches high, and about twenty-six inches apart, the bottoms rising at
the back half an inch, as well as at the front toward the horns. The
laths are fastened on with alternate diagonal fastenings, are two inches
wide, and close together. Such a _komatik_ will 'work' like a snake,
adapting itself to the inequalities of the ground, and will not spread
or 'buckle.' The dogs' traces should be of skin and fastened with
toggles or buttons to the bow-line. Dog-food must be distributed along
the _komatik_ trail in summer, though the people will make great
sacrifices to feed 'the Doctor's team.'
A light rifle should always be lashed on the komatik, as a rabbit, seal,
a partridge, or a deer gives often a light to the eyes with the fresh
proteids which they afford, like Jonathan's wild honey. In these
temperatures, with the muscular exercise required, my strictest
vegetarian friends should permit us to bow in the House of Rimmon.
When crossing wide stretches of country, we are often obliged to camp if
it comes on dark. It is quite impossible to navigate rough country when
one cannot see stumps, windfalls, or snags; and I have more than once
been obliged to walk ahead with a light, while caught in the forest
looking for our tilt, or even to search the snow for tracks with the
help of matches when my torch has carelessly been left at home.
A gun, however, is a temptation even to a doctor, and nearly cost one of
my colleagues his life. He was crossing a big divide, or neck of land,
between bays, and was twenty miles from anywhere, when his dogs took the
trail of some deer, which were evidently not far off. Being short of
fresh food, he hitched up his team and also his pilot's team, leaving
only his boy driver in charge, while the men pursued the caribou. He
warned the boy very strictly not to move on any account or they might be
lost. By an odd freak, a sudden snowstorm swept out of a clear sky just
after they left. They missed their way, and two days later, starving and
tired out, they found their first refuge, a small house many miles from
the spot where they had left the sledges. When, however, they sent a
relief team to find the _komatiks_, they discovered the boy still
'standing by' his charge.
You must always carry an axe, not only for firewood, but for getting
water—unless you wish to boil snow, which is a slow process and apt to
burn your kettle. Also, when you have either lost the trail or there is
none, you must have an axe to clear a track as you march ahead of your
dogs. Then there is, of course, the question of food. Buns baked with
chopped pork in them give one fine energy-producing material and do not
freeze. A sweet, dry, hard biscuit is made on the Coast which is
excellent in one's pocket. Cocoa, cooked pork fat, stick chocolate, are
all good to have. Our sealers carry dry oatmeal and sugar in their
'nonny bags,' which, mixed with snow, assuage their thirst and hunger as
well. Pork and beans in tins are good, but they freeze badly. I have
boiled a tin in our kettle for fifteen minutes, and then found a lump of
ice in the middle of the substance when it was turned out into the dish.
A friend, returning from an island, was jogging quietly along on the bay
ice when his team suddenly went wild. A polar bear had crossed close
ahead, and, before he could unlash his rifle, the _komatik_ had dashed
right on to the animal. The team were all around him, rapidly snarling
themselves in their traces. The bear, instead of running, stood up and
showed fight. The man had just time to draw his hunting-knife across the
traces and so save the dogs, caring much more for them than he did for
the prey. Whilst his dogs held the attention of the bear, he was able,
though only a few feet away, to unlash his rifle—and very soon ended
the conflict.
Winter travelling of a doctor on the Coast sometimes involves
considerable hardship. Once our doctor lost the track, and he and his
men had to spend several nights in the woods. They were so reduced by
hunger that they were obliged to chew pieces of green sealskin which
they cut from their boots and to boil their skin gloves over a fire
which they had kindled.
I am often asked, 'Do you wear furs in the house in winter?'
'No, nor outside either.'
'Then how do you keep warm?'
'By using common sense, and by doing a little work on the problem.'
The factors are, first, keeping your body fit and eating the right
foods. Secondly, when you have generated heat, all you have to do is to
keep it in. Use light, loose, impervious clothing with no leaks, and do
not forget to make it as bright and beautiful as you can. You must not
perspire or you will freeze later. You will not find a marble statue any
warmer because you put a fur coat on it, or a room get warm because
there is a stove in it, if all the windows and doors are left open to
the icy blast of an Arctic winter.
The first thing in clothing is the material—impervious to wind and
water, light in weight, inexpensive, tough, smooth on the outside so as
to shed snow, and beautiful. Just such a material can be ordered through
our offices in any colour, and the English firm which invented it calls
it 'Grenfell Cloth.' Admiral Byrd used it at the South Pole, MacMillan
at the North. We all use it. The only leak in the top garment might
occur around the face, but a trimming of fur inside and outside the
edges stops that when the string is pulled tight. The hood, of course,
is sewed fast to the tunic. An inset with a rubber band closes the
sleeves, and a long glove, with only the 'gun finger' and thumb
separate, comes up to the elbow with a separate strap at the wrist. The
trousers, in one piece, come up to the armpits under the _kossak_, or
dickey, while they fit close to the sides with zippers.
Light sealskin boots are the best for all weathers, but in cold, dry
seasons, deerskin dressed very soft is better still and warmer. The
skin-boot should be sewed with sinew, which swells in water and thus
keeps the stitches water-tight. These skin-boots are made by the
Northern Eskimo women, who chew the edges of the skin to make them soft
before sewing them with deer sinew. The art of chewing, as they are
brought up from childhood to help their mothers in this way, is a highly
developed one among the little Eskimo girls of North Labrador. The women
wear out their teeth in this way at an early age.
One great joy which comes with a work such as ours is the sympathy one
gets with the really poor. One learns how simple needs and simple lives
preserve simple virtues, which get lost in the crush of advancing
civilization. One bitter winter night, a blizzard of snow caught me and
my dogs after dark in a strange district. After midnight the dogs
brought me to a tiny cottage. There were no lights. The goodman, a
stranger to me, was in bed asleep. When I hammered on the door, a cheery
voice answered, and in a minute or two the door opened and I was blown
inside by the storm. Yet cheerfully the stranger slipped on some clothes
and straight from his bed went out, carrying an old hurricane lantern,
to feed my dogs; while his wife, after she had lit a fire in the
freezing cold room, busied herself making me some cocoa. Milk and sugar
were provided, and not till long afterward did I know it was a special
little hoard kept for visitors. Later I was sent to bed—quite unaware
that it was the only one, and that the good folk had spent the first
part of the night in it themselves. While I slept warm and snug, the
last half of the night they spent on the adjoining floor. Nor would they
accept one cent in return for their hospitality. ''Tis the way of the
Coast,' the good fellow assured me.
Another time, my host for the night had gone when I rose for breakfast.
I found that he had taken the road which I intended to travel to the
next village, some fourteen miles distant, just to break and mark a
trail for us, as we did not know the way; and secondly, to carry some
milk and sugar to 'save the face' of my prospective host for the next
night, who had 'made a bad voyage' that year. Still another time no less
than forty men from Conche marched ahead on a twenty-mile track to make
it possible for our team to travel quickly to a neighbouring settlement.
The man who walked to the village fourteen miles distant was a Roman
Catholic, and the neighbour to whom he carried the milk and sugar was a
Methodist.
One day that winter a father of eight children sent in from a near-by
island for immediate help. His gun had gone off while his hand was on
the muzzle and practically blown it to pieces. To treat him ten miles
away was out of the question, so we brought him in for operation. To
stop the bleeding he had plunged his hand into a barrel of flour, and
then tied it up in a bag, and as a result the wounded arm was poisoned
right up to the elbow. He preferred death to losing his right arm. Day
and night for weeks our nurse tended him, as he hovered between life and
death with general blood poisoning. Slowly his fine constitution brought
him through, and at last a secondary operation for repair became
possible. We took chances on bone-grafting to form a hand; and he was
left with a flipper like a seal's, able, however, to oppose one long
index finger and 'nip a line' when he fished. But there was no skin for
it. So my colleague and I shared the honours of supplying some. Pat—for
that was his name—has been a veritable apostle of the hospital ever
since, and has undoubtedly been the means of enabling others to risk the
danger of our suspected proselytizing. For though he had English
Episcopal skin on the palm of his hand and Scotch Presbyterian skin on
the back, the rest of him still remained a devout Roman Catholic.
Another somewhat parallel case occurred the following year, when a dear
old Catholic lady was hauled fifty miles over the snow by her two
stalwart sons, to have her leg removed for tubercular disease of the
ankle. She did exceedingly well, and the only puzzle which we could not
solve was where to raise the necessary hundred dollars for a new
leg—for her disposition, even more than her necessity, compelled her to
move about. While lecturing the following winter in America, I asked
friends to donate to me any of their old legs which they no longer
needed. Soon I found myself the happy possessor of two good wooden
limbs, one of which exactly fitted my requirements. A departed Methodist
had left it behind him, and his wife, a Baptist, donated it to me
through a Congregational clergyman, and I, an Episcopalian, had the joy
of seeing it a real blessing to as good a Roman Catholic as I know. As
the priest now says, there is now at least one Protestant leg in his
parish.
Called one day to a distant village, we came to a cottage where the
father of five children had a great, swollen knee, which he was unable
to put to the ground. It had loose, hard, cartilage bodies in it. We do
[not] like opening a working man's knee-joint and fishing around inside
it, especially when the operation must be done in a fisherman's tiny
cottage. But this time there was no alternative. I remembered the old
days when surgeons did all their operations under clouds of carbolic
spray. So we filled all available buckets with perchloride of mercury,
and helpers kept pouring it over the whole scene of action while I
worked—and we thus got a perfect result.
On another occasion we reached a house at midnight, found a boy with a
broken thigh, and had to begin work by thawing out a frozen board in
order to plane it for splints; then pad and fix it; and finally give
chloroform on the kitchen table in the early hours in order to set the
limb. Once we even had to knock down a partition in a tiny house, make a
full-length wooden bath, pitching the seams to make it water-tight, in
order to treat a spreading cellulitis. Now it would be a maternity case,
now a dental one, now a gunshot wound, or an axe cut with severed
tendons to adjust, now pneumonia. Often in solitary and 'unlearned'
homes, we would ourselves do the nursing and especially the cooking, as
that art for the sick is entirely uncultivated on the Coast. In this way
our winter passed speedily.
In the spring the new hospital steamer was brought out by my old crew,
and closing St. Anthony, we once more began the work among the fishing
fleets off the Labrador Coast for which I originally came out.
The northern end of Labrador is extremely interesting to cruise. The
great mountain ranges run out here right to the water-line, and form a
marvellous sea-front of embattled cliffs from two to three thousand feet
in height. The narrow passages which here and there run far into the
mountains and represent old valleys scooped out by ice action are
dominated all along their length by frowning peaks, whose pointed
summits betray the fact that they overtopped the ice-stream in the
glacial age.
Once before in the _Sir Donald_ we had tried to navigate the narrow run
which cuts off the island on which Cape Chidley stands from the mainland
of Labrador, but had missed the way among the many openings, and only
noted from a hill-top, like Moses, the course we should have taken.
Below us was a boiling current, whose vicious whirlpools, like miniature
maelstroms, poured a foaming torrent from Ungava Bay into the Atlantic.
We had with us a Moravian Brother, delegated to select a site for a new
station to carry on work from the extreme North among hitherto unreached
Eskimos.
It was, however, with our hearts somewhere near our mouths that we made
the attempt to get through this year, for we knew nothing of the depths
except that the Eskimos had told us that large icebergs at times drove
through the run. We could steam nine knots, and we essayed to cover the
tide, which we found against us as we neared the narrowest part, which
is scarcely a hundred yards wide. The current carried us bodily astern,
however, and glad enough we were to drive stern foremost into a cove on
one side and find bottom in thirteen fathoms of water, to hold on to
till the tide should turn. When at last it did turn and we got under
way, it fairly took us in its teeth, and we shot through, an impotent
plaything on the heaving bosom of the resistless waters. Later we
returned safely, with a site selected and a fair chart of the 'tickle,'
since named 'Grenfell Tickle' by His Excellency the Governor, Sir
William MacGregor, who visited it in 1908.
When winter again closed in, I arranged for an old friend, a clerk of
the Hudson's Bay Company, to stay with me at St. Anthony, and once more
we settled down in rooms hired in a cottage. This time we had an
arrangement with a paternal Government to help out by making an
allowance of twenty-five cents each for medicine for such patients as
could not themselves pay that amount—which, in those days, was quite a
large number. So many pathetic cases were impossible to treat as I would
wish to be treated that in spring I had to tell the people that without
a hospital I could not again face the work at St. Anthony. An expedition
into the woods was at once arranged, with a hundred men and thrice as
many dogs. We camped among the trees, and at the end of a fortnight came
home, hauling behind us the material for a thirty-six by thirty-six-foot
hospital.
In the forest, our kitchen was dug down in thick woods through six feet
of snow, and our main food reliance was on boiled 'doughboys'—the
'sinkers' which, with a slice of fat pork and a basin of bird soup, were
as popular as lobster _á la_ Newburg at Delmonico's or Sherry's.
Incidentally, I learned what hunger meant. Not being an expert axeman,
or particularly good with a pit-saw, I undertook to supply the food.
Calculating on the quantity needed by a hundred convicts at hard labour
in England, we hauled in on sledges the amount for two weeks. Our hungry
hundred men ate it in one day!
This hospital was opened six months later, and, with enlargements,
functioned until 1927, when it was replaced by a large fireproof
building, with every modern fitting.
The next summer we had trouble with a form of selfishness which I have
always heartily hated—the liquor traffic. Suppose we do admit that a
man has a right, for physical pleasure, to damage his body by swallowing
a toxin, he certainly has no more moral right to lure others to their
destruction in order to gain money from them than a filibuster has a
right to spend his money in gunpowder and shoot his fellow-countrymen.
To our great chagrin we found that an important neighbour near one of
our hospitals was selling intoxicants to the people—girls and men. One
girl, found drunk on the hill-side, brought home to me the cost of this
man's 'right to do as he liked,' reminding me of the old days at 'The
London' amidst the crime and misery caused by the sale of alcohol in the
purlieus of the East End.
This man and I had had several disagreements, and he had warned me not
to land on his premises on pain of being 'chucked into the sea.' But
when I tested the matter by landing quite alone from a rowboat, though a
large crowd of men gathered round while we discussed matters, his
Coast-born hospitality overcame him, and as his bell sounded the dinner
call, he promptly invited me to dine with him. I knew that he would not
poison the food, and soon we were glowering at one another over his own
table.
That summer, we were steaming to our Northern hospital from the deep bay
which runs in a hundred and fifty miles. About twenty miles from the
mouth, a boat hailed us out of the darkness, and we stopped and took
aboard a wrecked crew of three men. They had struck our friend's
well-insured old steam launch on a shoal, and she had sunk under them.
We took them aboard, boat and all, wrote down carefully their tale of
woe, and then put the steamer about, pushed as near the wreck as we
dared, and anchored. Her skipper came forward and asked me what I
intended doing, and I told him that as Lloyd's agent I was going to
survey the wreck. A little later, he again came to ask permission to go
aboard the wreck and look for something he had forgotten. I told him
'Certainly not.' Just before sunrise the watch called me and said that
the wrecked crew had launched their boat, and were rowing towards the
steam launch. 'Put our boat out at once, and drive them back,' was an
order which our boys obeyed with alacrity and zest. It was a very
uneasy-looking three men who faced me when they returned, though they
were full of bluff at what they would do for having their liberties thus
interfered with.
We discovered that the water only entered the wreck at low tide, and
then only forward; so by buoying her with casks, tearing up her ballast
deck, and using our own pumps as well as buckets—at which all hands of
my crew worked with a will—we at last found the hole. It was round.
There were no splinters on the inside. We made a huge bung from a
tree-trunk, plugged the opening, finished pumping her out, and before
dark had her floating alongside us. Late that night we were once more
anchored, this time opposite the dwelling-house of my friend the owner.
We immediately went ashore and woke him up. There is a great deal in
doing things at the psychological moment, and by midnight I had a deed
duly drawn up, signed and sealed, selling me the little steamer for
fifty cents. I see still the look in his eye as he gave me fifty cents
change from a dollar. He was a self-made man, had acquired considerable
money, and was keen as a ferret at business. The deed was to me a
confession that he was in the plot for barratry, to murder the boat for
her insurance.
On our trip south we picked up the small steamer again, and towing her
to a Hudson's Bay Company post we put her 'on the hard,' photographed
the hole, with all the splintering on the outside, and had a proper
survey of the hull made by the Company's shipwright. The unanimous
verdict was 'wilful murder.' In the fall, as her own best witness, I
tried to tow her to St. John's, but in a heavy breeze of wind and thick
snow I lost her at sea—and with her our own case as well. The law
decided that there was no evidence, and my friend, claiming that he had
lost both the boat and the insurance, threatened to sue me for the
value.
The sequel of the story came a year or so later. I had just returned
from the North. It used to be said always that our boat 'brought up the
keel of the Labrador'; but this year our friend had remained until
everyone else had gone. Just as we were about to leave for England, the
papers in St. John's published the news of the loss of a large,
foreign-going vessel, laden with fish for the Mediterranean, near the
very spot where our friend lived. On a visit to the shipping office I
found the event described in graphic language by the skipper and mate.
Our friend the consignee had himself been on board at the time the
'accident' had happened. After prodigies of valour they had been forced
to leave the ship, condemn her, and put her up for sale. Our friend, the
only buyer at the time on the Coast, had bought her in for eighty
dollars.
It was the end of November, and already a great deal of ice had made.
The place was six hundred miles north. The expense of trying to save the
ship would be great. But was she really lost? The heroics sounded too
good to be true. All life is a venture. Why not take one in the cause of
righteousness? That night in a chartered steam trawler, with a trusty
diver, I steamed out of the harbour, steering north. My skipper this
time was known everywhere as a very devil-may-care sea-dog, and among
the most famous of the seal hunters.
The way he drove our little craft, with ice inches thick formed by the
driving spray all over her bridge and blocking the chart-room windows,
made one glad to realize that the good sea genius of the English was
still so well preserved.
When our distance was run down and we hauled in for the land, we had to
heave to (with the ship sugared like a Christmas cake) and wait until we
were able to recognize our position in the drifting snow. At length we
located the islands, and never shall I forget, as we drew near, hearing
the watch call out, 'A ship's topmasts over the land!' It was the wreck
for which we were looking.
It took some hours to cut through the ice in which she lay before we
could get aboard, and even the old skipper showed excitement when at
last we stood on her deck. Needless to say, she was not upside-down, nor
was she hurt in any way, though she was completely stripped of all
running-gear. The diver reported no damage to her bottom, while the mate
told us that the fish in her hold were dry, and her hatches still
tightly clewed, never having been stirred.
With much hearty goodwill our crew jettisoned fish enough into our own
vessel to float the craft. Fearing that so late in the year we might
fail to tow her safely for such a distance, and remembering the outcome
of our losing the launch, we opened the stores on the island belonging
to our friend, and found both blocks and sails, neatly labelled and
stowed away. We soon had our prize not only refitted for sea, but also
stocked with food, water, chart, and compass, and all essentials for a
voyage across the Atlantic, if she were to break loose and we to lose
her. The last orders were to our mate, who was put aboard the prize with
a crew, 'If not St. John's, then Liverpool.'
Though we had sixty fathoms of anchor chain on each of our wire cables
to the ship, we broke one in a seaway the first night out, and had to
haul under the lee of some cliffs and repair damages. Often for hours
together the vessel by day, and her lights by night, would disappear,
and our hearts would jump into our mouths for fear that we might again
fail. But at last, with all our bunting flying and both ships dressed as
if for a holiday, we proudly entered the Narrows of St. John's Harbour,
the cynosure of all eyes. The skipper of the barrated vessel and our
friend had meanwhile gone to England, so the Government had them
extradited. The captain, who was ill with a fatal disease, made a full
confession, and both men were sent to prison.
That is how we 'went dry' in that section of the Labrador.
CHAPTER XI
BUNKERS
AN apologist for the old days of slavery in the Southern States of
America may still believe that a primitive and uneducated people is
better off under the regime of paternalism, peonage, and slavery.
Possibly they are. After all it is a question of standard; but for my
part I would rather starve than submit to it. As we view life, it seems
a practice belonging to the Dark Ages.
One day I was talking to one of the most charming of our Labrador
settlers. As I looked around the poor little cottage, I wondered if the
old man's proverbial generosity was the sole reason why he and his wife
had come to poverty in their old age. He had been one of the best of the
local trappers. He told me that, whenever his hunt had procured him
everything that he could need or want for the ensuing winter, one of the
clerks always took him around the store again, in order that he might
show his loyalty to the Company by taking up a little more than he could
pay for, and so keep his name as a debtor on their books. They were sure
of him thus. It was the custom of trade on the Labrador in those days.
It is never easy for a man in a primitive country to keep a credit
balance. But we believed that it could be done, and it was for that
reason that we started our little co-operative stores among the poorer
fishermen in scattered villages. As fighting propositions, and
considering the open hostility which the move engendered, they have
certainly lent more thrills to a 'missionary life' than has the Arctic
Ocean.
Government relief failed to cope with the evils of the 'truck' system of
trade. Indeed, in the opinion of thinking men, it only made matters
worse.
In my early days on the Coast a poor man came to me as a magistrate to
settle a case for him against his trader. The autumn previous he had
given the trader a hundred dollars in cash with which to buy him a new
net. The trader had been unable to secure the twine for this; but when
the man came in the spring to get his usual advance for supplies, the
trader deducted the hundred dollars cash from the amount of the
fisherman's bill. Yet that fisherman actually appealed to me as a
Justice of the Peace to have the trader punished. Custom compelled the
actual cash to be returned.
On another occasion one of my fishermen friends and I were sitting on a
gunning point, shooting ducks as they flew by on their fall migration. I
suddenly noticed that he did not even attempt to fire at a wonderful
flock of eiders which passed directly over our heads. 'Whatever is the
matter, Jim?' I asked. 'I settled with my merchant to-day,' he replied,
'and he won't advance me nothing for winter. A duck or two won't matter.
'Tis the children I'm minding.' The fishery had been poor, and not
having enough to meet his advances at the trader's, he had sold a few
quintals of fish outside for cash, in order to get things like tinned
milk which his merchant would never have allowed him on winter credit.
He had been caught and the trader had retaliated. We went to the trader
to find out how much the poor fellow was in debt. His debit account on
the books read over three thousand dollars, carrying over a period of
many years.
We were lying at anchor in an open roadstead when a trader came aboard
and took out a summons against a native who had obtained an advance of
supplies from him and was not returning any fish. An inspection of the
cottage revealed no assets, and, as it is not legal to seize a
fisherman's house or boat for debt, there was nothing to offer the
plaintiff except the blessing of the Court. However, his boat had hardly
rounded the headland out of sight when the defendant, stripping off his
coat and waistcoat, produced a fine white fox skin, which he offered to
sell to the Judge! This spirit was the child of the system.
Summer frosts on the coasts of Labrador made the growing of vegetables
precarious, except by the few families who remain at the heads of the
long bays all the year around, far removed from the polar current. None
of our very abundant native berries are naturally sweet, so in order to
preserve them for winter consumption we must import all our 'sweetness.'
We must also import cotton, wool, and many other vital necessities of
life, though the Coast provides firewood, lumber, fish and game, and
skins for boots or clothing. On the other hand, we export our codfish,
salmon, seals, trout, oil, whales, and fur. A medium of exchange is as
imperative for us as for other parts of the civilized world.
From every point of view, therefore, we were encouraged to start
co-operative stores, a plan which has proved eminently successful in
England. All attempts to meddle with the economic methods of the _status
quo_ met with unfriendly criticism in the Colony generally, and these
small co-operative, distributive stores were no exception. Some of the
criticism, however, came from our best merchant friends, who warned us
that to teach co-operation would mean burning our fingers. Though there
proved to be some truth in that contention, I still believe that the
people are honest, and that the laziness and indolence which some
display is in most cases due either to despair or to the inability to
work properly on an utterly insufficient diet.
Matters went from bad to worse as years went by, and finally culminated
in a village called Red Bay, on the north side of the Straits of Belle
Isle. One autumn as we made our last call there, we found the fishermen
with their Lares and Penates packed, waiting for us on their fish
stages. They begged us to give them a passage south, as they could no
longer keep body and soul together on that section of the Coast. That
night, at a conference called to consider the problem, it was decided
that the people must be their own merchants, sharing the risks and
dividing whatever profits might accrue. We pointed out to them that the
life of the fisherman and the trapper is at best a gamble, and that the
reason they like credit advances is that it makes the other man carry
the risks.
At the time of the formation of this co-operative store, we thought it a
significant fact that not one shareholder wished to have his name
registered, and one and all they were opposed to having the little
building labelled as a store—so ingrained in them was their fear of
their suppliers. A year's savings of all the seventeen families of the
place aggregated only eighty-five dollars, so we had to lend them enough
to enable them to purchase their first cargo. That loan has been repaid
years ago. To-day not a barrow-load of fish leaves that harbour except
through the co-operative store. Due solely to that little effort, the
people of the village have been able to tide over a series of bad
fisheries and every family is free from debt. Though the Red Bay
Co-operative Store celebrated its thirty-eighth birthday with only a
modest five per cent dividend, that was a creditable record in a year
when so many failures and bankruptcies were occurring, not only in
Newfoundland, but in other more favoured parts of the world. Moreover,
the effort has helped materially in making the social life of the
village more of that co-operative type which is the one and only basis
in the world on which a kingdom of peace and righteousness can exist.
Even in the terrible winter of 1932, when the Government had to feed
fifty thousand fishermen and their wives and families, since it was
impossible to sell their fish, Red Bay folk did not go hungry.
During my first winter at St. Anthony, the young minister of a local
church often stopped on his rounds at the same houses as we did on ours,
and the problem of co-operation was frequently discussed. Before taking
Orders he had been trading, and had so disliked the methods that he had
retired. He promised to help us organize a co-operative store on the
Newfoundland side of the Straits.
When the day arrived for the initial meeting, the chosen rendezvous was
a village some fourteen miles to the north of us. The evening before,
the minister sent word that he could not be present, as he had to go to
another hamlet in his mission, twenty miles to the westward, in order to
hold a service. As we knew how much weight his opinion carried with the
fishermen, this was a heavy blow, especially as the traders had notified
me that they would be present in a body to block our project if they
possibly could. Fortunately, we remembered that the clergyman did not
know the way, so it was possible to persuade his dog-driver to work
around gradually and end up at our meeting. Our friend was, therefore,
present willy-nilly, but he proved a broken reed, for in the face of the
traders he went back on co-operation.
It so happened that our _komatik_ broke through the ice as we were
taking a short cut across a bay to reach the meeting, and we arrived
just in time to hear the traders joking the minister for having been
tricked. It was a dark, crisp, cold night, and the howling of the
hundreds of dogs which had hauled people to the scene from all over the
countryside made a dismal chorus outside the windows of the little
house. Fear of the old regime lay heavy on the gathering. No one but the
traders dared speak, and they talked all the time. Only one courageous
old fisherman raised his voice, but his maiden speech evoked hearty
applause. 'Doctor—I means Mr. Chairman—if this 'ere copper store buys
a bar'l of flour in St. John's for five dollars, be it going to sell it
to we for ten? That's what us wants to know.'
For a long time no one was found who dared to take the management of the
venture, but at length the best-loved fisherman on the shore stepped
into the breach. What he lacked in 'learning' he made up in optimism,
pluck, and unselfishness. It is an age-honoured custom on the Coast to
give free meals to all travellers, be they men or dogs or both, and
lodging to boot. Customers of the new store came from so far away that
they had often to stay overnight, and it was always to Harry's house
that they went. Profits on their small purchases were slight in any
case, and non-existent by the time the customers had been fed and
lodged. So we printed, mounted, framed, and despatched to our friend the
motto, 'No more free meals. Each meal will cost ten cents in advance.'
His grateful reply informed us that he had hung the card up in the 'best
room.' The next time we 'blew in' to Harry's house, we found the legend
hanging with its face to the wall. Later this little store was absorbed
by the larger new one at St. Anthony, as being so close by.
Our third outpost of co-operation was located at a village seventy-five
miles to the westward called Flowers Cove. Here the parson came in with
a will. Being a Church of England man, he was a more permanent resident.
He said, 'I am a poor man, but I'd sell my extra boots in order to be
able to put one more share in the store.' He kept his word, and what was
more important, he put in his brains. Everyone in the vicinity who had
felt the burden of the old system joined the store. One poor Irishman
walked seventy miles along the Straits shore to catch me on my next
visit, and secretly gave me five dollars, to invest for him in the
store. 'Tis all I have in the world, sir, saving a bunch of children.'
For years afterwards, every time I visited that part of the Coast, Paddy
came for a private interview to enquire after the health of the 'copper
store,' until the day when he triumphantly produced another five dollars
for a second share, 'out of me profits.'
The War proved fatal to this, our largest and practically our oldest
effort. Success was its undoing. It had paid dividends as high as thirty
per cent, owing to careful buying, rapid rises in prices, and general
prosperity. Their trade increased so largely that the co-operators
purchased vessels to do their own transportation, cornered
herring—which in that section of the Coast had risen to ten dollars a
barrel—and allowed their successful manager to refuse large sums for
their fish in the local market and to export it direct to Europe
instead. The Committee admitted subsequently that they had not exercised
even the minimum of control which they should have done. Their two
largest cargoes were both lost at sea under circumstances which admitted
of their claiming no insurance. The upshot of the whole matter was that
a year or so later that store had to be sold for debt. It was bought in
by a family of local fishermen, and now under their control is running
successfully as a private venture. Even so, being under the direction of
people who live and spend their profits in the neighbourhood, such
ownership is a great advance over the absentee trader. Everyone in
America is familiar with the serious attempt which is made by endless
advertising to persuade purchasers to deal with their neighbourhood
shopkeepers. The many advantages to the community of such a course are
even more obvious on the fringes of civilization.
Spurred by the benefits of the Red Bay Store, the people of a little
hamlet some forty miles away determined to co-operate also. The result
was a fine little shop near our hospital at Battle Harbour. The fact
that the first year this venture did six thousand dollars' worth of
business put a match to the wrath of those whose opposition had hitherto
been that of rats behind the wainscot. They succeeded in having a
Commission appointed by the Government and sent down to enquire into the
work of the Grenfell Association as being 'a menace to honest trade.'
The Commission and even the lawyers all told me that they had been
bitterly prejudiced against the whole Mission by misrepresentations and
the gossip of hearsay, even before they began their exhaustive enquiries
on the spot. Their findings were a complete refutation of all the
accusations, however, and proved the best possible advertisement for us.
As in many other similar instances, the effort to discredit proved a
boomerang, for certainly in no other way could we have secured the
approval of the Government for our work. Twenty thousand copies of the
Commission's Report were printed and distributed. Thus in large measure
an end was put to really hurtful rumours, some of which could not help
finding credence among simple-minded people.
St. Anthony co-operative store—the Spot Cash Co-operative Company,
Limited—has shown a steady, healthy growth, and is to-day a vital part
in the life of the place. The chequered days of its first bitter
experience, due entirely to the negligence of the outside manager, still
have their unfortunate aftermath of distrust in the minds of some of the
people. In spite of all, however, it is doing far and away the biggest
business in the neighbourhood. It buys goods wholesale in the United
States and Canada as well as in St. John's, and since its
reorganization, now many years ago, on a sound basis, it has not once
missed paying a dividend. In 1931 its trade amounted to over fifty
thousand dollars. It has supplied orders from many of the outlying
villages, and even from the extreme north of Labrador. Incidentally, it
has made St. Anthony the cheapest place in which to buy necessities
anywhere in the North, while its renewed and enlarged premises in the
centre of the community give a sense of solidarity. Its successful
management has been made possible in large measure by a series of local
young men and women who have returned from Business Colleges in the
United States, their training having been made possible for them by Lady
Grenfell through her educational work.
We are particularly grateful for one aspect of the whole co-operative
movement on the Coast. Politics have not been permitted to intrude, and
stress has been laid on forbearance, brotherliness, and self-reliance.
The endeavour has been to inculcate everywhere that only thus can they
enjoy the balance of profit which makes the difference between plenty
and poverty on this isolated Coast. Only photographs of conditions as
they were in the old days will induce the present generation to admit
that want and squalor in their villages had ever reached the depths
which we recall only too vividly. Those who enjoy the new day are unable
and unwilling to believe what their parents went through.
Even politicians are admitting to-day that it is not essential that
Labrador should grow flour or sugar to be happy and content and
independent. Stephen King-Hall's little play, called _B. J. One_, with
its gospel that co-operation, not competition, must in future be the
axis around which the economic world revolves, was heralded over the
British Broadcasting Corporation, and even the most 'stand-pat'
Bombastes Furioso sees that nothing is to be gained by attacking a world
which confers a knighthood on Norman Angell for showing how war injures
everybody.
It seems only just in this connection to say that the summer of 1910
brought me a fine crop of personal worries, and probably deservedly so,
for no one should leave his business affairs to another without
guarantees, occasionally renewed, that all is well. Business is not to
my liking. Moreover, I have an over-readiness to accept as helpers men
whose qualifications are sometimes of their own rating. My troubles came
through the co-operative stores.
None of the stores at the beginning of the venture were incorporated and
the liability on them was therefore unlimited. Though I had always felt
it best not to accept a penny of interest on the money I had put into
them, their agent in St. John's had allowed them great latitude in
credits. But it was a bolt from the blue when I learned that the
merchants in St. John's were owed twenty-five thousand dollars by the
stores, and that I was being held responsible for every penny of it. One
can have little heart in his work if he feels that everyone looking at
him thinks he is a defaulter. So I had to find some way out. The
merchants were told the facts and asked to meet me at the office of one
of them, to go over accounts, and try to find some plan to settle.
The next discovery was that the manager of the little store at St.
Anthony, who was an exceedingly pious man—whose great zeal for cottage
meetings and that form of religious work had led me to think too highly
of him—had neglected his books and his work, and given credit to
everyone who came along. The St. John's agent claimed that he had made a
loss of twelve thousand dollars in a year.
I cashed every available personal asset which I could. The beautiful
_Emma E. White_, also a personal possession, arrived in St. John's while
we were there, with a full load of lumber, but it and she sailed
straight into the melting-pot. The merchants, with one exception, were
all as good about the matter as men can be. They were perfectly
satisfied when they saw that one meant to face the debt squarely. One
was nasty about it, saying that he would not wait. Whether he gained by
it or not is hard to say. He was paid first, anyhow. The standard of
what is really remunerative in life is graded differently. With the sale
of a few investments and some other available property, and the help of
a friend, the liability was so far reduced that, with what the stores
paid, only one merchant was not fully indemnified, and he generously
told me not to worry about the balance.
The incident was not the fault of the people of the Coast. Often I had
been warned by the merchants that the co-operative stores would fail and
that the people would rob me. There were badly kept books, and a number
of fishermen disclaimed their debts charged against them. I am sure,
however, that they did not go back on me willingly. It was the
management, not the people or the system, which was at fault. Several of
the stores are still running splendidly, and pay regular dividends to
their fishermen shareholders.
Our experiments in co-operation, though carried out on so restricted a
scale, convinced us that, if our profits could be kept on the Coast, the
next-to-Nature life had enough to offer in character as well as in
comforts to attract a permanent population.
Along the French Shore in Northern Newfoundland the people were more
densely settled than on the Labrador proper; the hinterland was small
and the opportunities for supplementing the income earned by fishing
correspondingly fewer. Moreover, the polar current, split by the most
northerly cape of Newfoundland, as it enters the Straits of Belle Isle,
renders that section of land most liable to summer frosts, with a far
worse climate than in the Labrador bays. Gardening there is consequently
less remunerative.
For years we puzzled our brains to discover some way to add to the
earning capacity of the people in that section. It must be an enterprise
which would be both co-operative and distributive. I had been told that
there was plenty of timber to justify running a mill in one of the big
bays, but that no sawmill paid in Newfoundland. All the same we were
spurred by the poverty which we had seen in Canada Bay, about sixty
miles south of St. Anthony. Also we knew that in our district labour
would be cheaper than in the southern part of the island—for our labour
in winter usually went begging.
The Government wisely gave us a special grant, as our enterprise, if
successful, would relieve them of the necessity of giving the inevitable
poor relief in that locality. The whole expense of the undertaking fell
on me personally, for the Board of the Mission of those days felt it was
outside their sphere. Moreover, we had already built St. Anthony
Hospital, in spite of the fact that they had discouraged it from the
first.
The people had no money to put into the sawmill venture, and the
peculiar circumstances prevented my asking for help from friends
outside. So it was with foreboding that we ordered a mill as if it were
a pound of chocolates, and arranged with two young Englishmen to come
out to help, for their expenses only. Three hundred dollars also had to
be paid for the necessary survey and line cutting, and houses must be
erected and furnished. At that time I had never seen a mill and
doubtless my very ignorance supplied me with the courage to go ahead. I
admit that, when I heard that one piece of the machinery included a
boiler and weighed three tons, my misgivings were not lessened.
Snow was already lying on the ground when at last our summer's medical
cruise was over and we could visit the scene of the new venture. A tiny
cottage had been erected among the trees. It was small and damp. In the
morning its walls inside were white with frost until the fire had been
going for some time. However, the huge boiler, that 'bugaboo' of my
dreams, lay safely on the bank. 'How did you get it there?' was my first
query. 'We warped the vessel as near to the land as we could, then hove
her close ashore and put skids from the rocks off to her. Over these we
slid the boiler on to the bank, everyone hauling it up with their
tackles.' The survey, though carried out by the Minister of
Agriculture's own son and accepted by the Government, was poorly marked,
and indeed has given us untold trouble ever since—for we have never
been able to determine exactly where our boundaries lie.
[Illustration: TRAVELLING WITH REINDEER]
[Illustration: REINDEER AT REST]
Christmas and New Year had come and gone before the demands of the
hospital abated sufficiently for us to turn our thoughts once more to
the new enterprise. The only difficulty of making the fifty-mile journey
by dogs lay in the fact that there were no trails, and most of the way
led through virgin forest, where windfalls and stumps and dense
undergrowth made the ordinary obstacle race a marathon in comparison. We
knew what we were in for, since, in our eagerness to begin dog-driving
when the first snow fell, we had wandered over the tops of small trees
hidden by snow, fallen through, and literally floundered about under the
crust, unable to climb on to the surface again. Not so very long before,
a man bringing his _komatik_ down a steep hill at Conche missed his
footing on the hard snow-path and fell headlong into the great drift
beside the trail. The heavy, loaded sledge ran over him and pressed him
still deeper into the bank. Struggling only made him sink further; and
an hour later the poor fellow was discovered, smothered to death.
No one knew the way from St. Anthony to the mill, and we could not hear
of a single man who had ever gone across the country in winter. We hoped
to do that fifty miles in two days. To steer by compass sounded easy,
but that perverse instrument persisted in pointing to the precipitous
cliffs and impenetrable thickets. At length we struck a river, and
argued that if we followed it we should come out at the head of the bay,
thereby having only three miles of salt-water ice to cross. Our hopes
came to nothing, however, for the stream proved a veritable torrent,
leaping over rapids and falls through great ice canyons. Instead of
gliding over a glassy surface as we had pictured, we found ourselves
treading, like Agag, between heavy ice-blocks.
To-day there is a good trail cut and blazed, so that even carrying
patients over that long haul is little more than a 'joy ride'; though
there is always enough challenge left in the journey to lend it tang.
I recall another occasion when we were trying to cross Hare Bay and one
of my dogs fell through the ice. It was ten below zero with a biting
wind. When, just a mile from the opposite shore, I jumped from the
_komatik_ to try the ice edge, it gave way suddenly and in I fell. The
best advice on that day was to 'keep cool.' Even with a mile of the
fastest sprinting I could manage, my clothing soon became like the
armour of an ancient knight, and, though in those days I was accustomed
to break the ice in the morning to bathe, running in a coat of mail was
a novel experience.
On the fourth day we reached the mill, to find that logging had
progressed satisfactorily, and the future looked rosy for this latest
attempt to give work and food and money and self-respect instead of a
dole. The boxes of machinery for cutting timber were being unpacked—the
weird iron parts having to us all the piquancy of a Chinese puzzle, with
the added zest of knowing what potential they stood for when rightly
arranged.
One accident alone marred the record of that first year. A party of
children had been crossing the ice in the harbour on their way to
school, when it gave way, dropping a number of them into the treacherous
rapids of that bit of water. One of the English volunteers was a
first-class athlete and saved five lives, but two of the children had
been drowned. The young fellow himself was so badly chilled that it had
taken the hot body of the father of one of the rescued children, wrapped
up in bed with him in lieu of a hot-water bottle, to restore his
circulation.
That first year only one trouble at the mill proved insurmountable. The
log-hauler would not deliver the goods to the rotary saw. When
subsequently we discovered that the whole apparatus was upside-down, it
did not seem so surprising, after all! The second year, however, was our
hardest time. For the bills for the lumber which we had sold were not
paid in time for us to buy the absolutely essential stock of food for
the people for the winter. Like King Midas of old, it was food, not
cash, which they needed in their mouths; and without the food the men
could not go logging. When finally we could see our way to purchase
those supplies for the loggers, the whole bay was frozen over, and the
cargo had to be landed by the mail steamer, nine miles away from the
mill. Somehow, the little hospital steamer _Strathcona___ must carry it
up the bay. So it was decided that, as we could not possibly butt
through the ice, we must butt over it.
Every movable thing, including chains and anchors, was shifted to the
after end of the ship and piled up there with the barrels of pork,
molasses, flour, and sugar, all the ship's boats and heavy weights, so
as to bring her forefoot above the water-level. Then we banged into the
ice, running up on to it and crashing through, but doing no damage
whatever to the steamer's hull. It was very hard work to back her astern
for another drive, so every available man stood on the rail on one side,
each carrying a weight, and then at the signal rushed to the other side,
and so backward and forward, giving the boat a good roll. Slow as it
was, we got there, and that in true Biblical fashion, literally 'reeling
to and fro like drunken men.'
Labrador has many other things to offer besides her wonderful fisheries
as a claim for admission into the hegemony of worth-while nations. Her
valuable furs are no mean contribution to both the comfort and the
beauty of the civilized world. Under the old regime, trappers were not
allowed to buy traps, or even salmon nets. They hired all such gear 'on
halves,' which meant that half the catch went to the owner of the
outfit, while the other half was also retained by the owners, the
trapper taking out such goods at their store as he required, but at
whatever price the merchant cared to charge against his account.
In my early days fur on the Labrador was very cheap. Even a silver fox
seldom fetched a hundred dollars, while lynx, wolverine, beaver, mink,
bear, and other skins were priced in proportion. In spite of this, some
men made a good living out of furring. We came to the conclusion that to
breed animals in captivity would not only improve conditions along this
line, but would also save poor settlers from having on their hands pelts
which were often useless. Sometimes a big storm would prevent a trapper
getting around his fur path, and meanwhile mice or another fox might
come along and partially eat a fine fur caught in a trap. Again, a poor
man might find an animal out-of-season which had slept on wet snow or
ice and frozen his fur to it, so that in order to get up he had had to
pull out his own King (long) hairs. Of course that renders the pelt
practically valueless, but the temptation to get even fifty cents was
often too great, and the man would kill the animal.
Thus it came about that we decided to start a fox farm at St. Anthony.
We chose a location close to the hospital; and we rejoice to-day to know
that the idea was correct, though at the moment we had neither
experience nor time to teach us how to manage the animals.
The Labrador red fox is quite common, and, like the white, breeds in
holes and sand-dunes. A litter of foxes may include black, red, silver,
and patches, but never white. The white fox is a smaller animal and a
distinct species. Foxes feed largely on mice, and on a small creature
much like a grey mole, called a lemming. These in turn feed on the roots
of plants. When the lemmings are plentiful, so are our common foxes, and
_vice versa_.
In our little experimental farm we soon had a dozen couples—red, white,
patch, and one pair of silvers. Some of the young pups were very tame,
but we did not have success in breeding them. Either they died or their
parents ate them. A Harvard professor who happened to be cruising with
me that summer records that I was carrying 'fifteen little foxes on
board the _Strathcona_ to St. Anthony for starting the fox farm. Some of
the little animals had been brought aboard in blubber casks and their
coats were very sticky. After a few days they became very tame and
played with the dogs, were all over the deck, fell down the
companion-way, were always having their tails and feet stepped on and
yelping with pain, when not yelling for food. The long-suffering seaman
who took care of them said to me, "I been cleaned out that fox box. It
do be shockin'. I been in a courageous turmoil my time, but dis be the
head smell ever I witnessed."'
The reds and patch foxes in my farm became very tame, and always ran out
to greet us. One of the reds loved nothing better than to be caught and
hugged, and squealed with delight when you took notice of it. The
whites, and still more the silvers, were always very shy. Every
schooner's crew entering the harbour was interested in the fox farm, and
a deeply cut pathway up the hill was soon worn by the feet of fishermen
going up to see the animals.
As we had had no success with raising the young fox pups, when Prince
Edward Island began its work in fox-breeding we decided to discontinue
our experiment, as we had neither time nor money to carry on the work
properly. Most unfortunately, too, the foxes in our farm developed a
kind of sickness which resembled strychnine poisoning. This killed three
of the animals which were our especial pets.
In the summer of 1907, a schooner's crew offered me four live young
silvers for two hundred dollars, but at that moment we had enough of the
animals and refused to buy them. In 1914, one of our distant neighbours
who had caught a live slut in pup sold her and her little brood for ten
thousand dollars.
Since those days a number of fox farms have sprung up both in
Newfoundland and Labrador, and have met with more or less success. The
Hudson's Bay Company has a very large fox farm at Romaine; and there is
also a successful one running at Piastre Bay. Though fox-breeding is an
interesting hobby, it requires almost as much patience as running an
orphanage. On the other hand, are not sheep, angora goats, oxen, and
other domestic animals merely results of similar efforts? If fox-farming
should one day entirely supersede the use of the present sharp-toothed
leg trap, no small gain in humane treatment of dumb creatures would be
effected. Though the fur trapper as a rule is a gentle creature, the
'quality of mercy is not strained' in furring any more than it is in the
seal fishery.
Outwitting foxes is not so easy as those who talk slightingly of 'the
lower animals' seem to suppose. One winter two men from North
Newfoundland, who had a plan to get rich by securing rare fox skins,
stayed in the North when the fishing fleets were driven south by the
close of open water. It came out later that they had obtained from a
friend a lot of poison, with which they intended to make their fortunes,
though they knew perfectly well that the use of poison in catching
fur-bearing animals is strictly forbidden by law.
It so happened that a large whale had been driven ashore that fall; and
near the carcass they made their camp, knowing that foxes would be sure
to be attracted by the feast. Just before Christmas a violent storm
broke up the standing ice and washed the whale clean away. It took a lot
of discussion before they decided to give up the herrings which they had
designed for their own Christmas dinner to be used as bait; but, as one
of the men argued, 'a good fox is worth more than a meal.' So they
filled up the herrings with the poison, found a trail on the snow where
a fox had been passing to and fro, placed the poisoned bait on it, and
hid away to watch results. A fine silver fox soon scented the herring,
and, snapping it up, swallowed it in a gulp. They could easily have shot
the fox, but decided not to for fear of injuring the pelt with bullet
holes. So they watched Reynard make for the woods, and then followed
close behind, waiting for him to drop in his tracks. They were not
skilled trappers and soon lost their way. On looking around, they were
surprised to see the fox following them. They casually dropped another
herring and went on without stopping. Sure enough, Brother Fox gobbled
the second herring with as much gusto as he had the first. A third time
they repeated the attempt, but again Master Reynard was left licking his
chops. By this time he was a bit wary and would not come within gunshot.
The day ended with the last herring dropped and the fox farther than
ever behind, with a knowing grin on his face. Evidently he was a bit
puzzled at finding so many fat herrings on that pathway of his. The men
swore that he had some internal antidote for their poison. They never
laid eyes on him again; but we trust that on Christmas morning he was
laughing loudly in his den at the two would-be hunters, thinking of
their lost herrings, their lost fox, and their lost self-respect.
Mink-breeding is now proving remunerative, and is doing well on the
Coast, as it is in America and Canada. Animal genetics is practically a
new science. It undoubtedly has a great future and much to give the
world. Special leave of absence was granted to Professor Darling, of
Edinburgh, to do a preliminary survey of Labrador in 1932, but so far we
have been unable to get the thousand dollars required to meet the
necessary expenses—the state of finances in America and Europe alike
being so unfortunate. Amongst the endless fears and doubts, many men of
good heart are no longer able to help 'divers good causes,' even one
like this which is of world-wide interest.
CHAPTER XII
RESIDUARY LEGATEE
IN my boyhood I used to collect postage stamps, butterflies, and birds'
eggs. When we sailed to Labrador, however, a new chance presented
itself, and I started to collect children. The truth is I chanced upon a
couple, a little boy and girl, who had no parents. They lived in a very
poor hamlet by the sea, and they did not have one single possession—not
even the clothes they stood up in were their own. The other poor folk of
the village had kept them alive; but so great was the want in that place
and so deeply in debt were the fishermen that when the winter came on
the merchants who come north each summer packed up all their goods. As
there was no chance whatever of the people paying for any of the food,
they started south, leaving the miserable little settlement to sink or
swim as best it could.
When those fishermen came aboard our hospital schooner late that fall,
little did they know what was going to happen to any of them,
particularly those two 'nobody's children.' Our schooner was under a
hundred feet long and much smaller than the _Santa Maria_ or the
_Mayflower_, but to those two waifs she must have looked like a
veritable Leviathan. We took those two little Labrador orphans to
England with us; and to-day, forty years later, they can look back on a
happy and useful life.
Everyone crowded to see the Eskimo Encampment at the World's Fair in
Chicago, held just forty years ago. The most popular side-show was a
little boy, the son of a Northern chieftain called Kaiachououk; and many
a coin was flung into the ring that Prince Pomuik might show his skill
with the thirty-foot lash of his dog-whip. One man, of all those who
stared with idle curiosity at the little people from the Labrador, took
an interest in the child. It was the Reverend C. C. Carpenter, who had
spent some years of his early life as a clergyman on our Coast.
When the Exhibition closed, all the Eskimos were sent back to the North.
Mr. Carpenter, however, did not forget his little friend, and continued
to write to him, though he never received any answers to his letters.
One dark, foggy night in August 1895, we sailed into the entrance of
that marvellous gorge called Nakvak. We had determined to push as far
north as the most northerly white family on the Labrador. As we nosed
our way cautiously some twenty miles from the entrance, our watch
suddenly sang out, 'Light on the starboard bow!' Immediately our
steamer's whistle echoed and re-echoed between those towering cliffs.
Three rifle shots answered our signal, and soon a boat bumped against
our side, and a hearty Englishman sprang over the rail. It was George
Ford, the factor of the Hudson's Bay Company's post. He told us of a
band of Eskimos who had gone still farther up the fjord, carrying with
them a dying little boy. Next day we found Pomuik, naked and haggard,
suffering from an insidious hip disease, lying on the rocks beside a
tiny _tubik_.
We steamed south again, taking the sick lad with us, for the Eskimos had
been only too happy to be rid of him. Pomuik brought with him his only
treasure, a letter from a clergyman in Andover, Massachusetts, this same
Mr. Carpenter. It contained a photograph, and, when I showed it to the
boy, he said, 'Me even love him.' All this I posted back to Mr.
Carpenter to let him know his boy was being cared for.
Some weeks later, the answer to our letter came back. It read, 'Keep
him. I write for _The Congregationalist_, a magazine here in the States,
and the children in "The Corner" will be his guardians. He must never be
cold or lonely again.' So the 'Corner Cot' came into existence in Battle
Harbour Hospital, and the little Eskimo boy occupied it for the brief
remainder of his life.
On my return from England the following summer, the first to greet me
was Pomuik. 'Me Gabriel Pomuik now,' he explained. A good Moravian
Brother had come along during the winter and christened the child by the
name of the Angel of Comfort.
In a sheltered corner of a little graveyard on the Labrador rests the
body of this 'happy Prince.' The doctor in charge of that hospital wrote
me that when he died the wards seemed desolate without his smiling face.
The night he was buried the mysterious aurora lit up the sky. The
Eskimos always call the Northern Lights 'the spirits of the dead at
play.' To us it seemed a shining symbol of the joy in the City of the
King that another young soldier had won his way home.
As vividly as if it were yesterday there flashed across my memory a
visit to the isolated cottage of a lonely Scotch settler. The watch had
sighted the S O S signal on the shore, and we hove our little steamer to
in the wind. A dead woman lay on the floor of the lonely little log
house when I entered, and a dying man was on the board settle. It was
our first experience of influenza. When day broke, we dug a grave and
buried both parents. After we had filled in the hole, there were five
little children sitting disconsolately facing us on the mound of sand.
Then and there the Labrador collection of derelict children began.
We had anchored among a group of islands to give the people a chance of
coming aboard the hospital ship. Suddenly a boat bumped our side, and a
woman climbed over the rail with a bundle under each arm. On my
chartroom table she laid the two bundles and proceeded to untie them.
'There is something wrong with them, sir,' she explained. Examination
showed that, although their eyes looked right, both children were as
blind as kittens with congenital posterior polar cataracts.
'Have you any other children?' I asked the mother.
'Yes, four.'
'Where is your husband?'
'Killed by a gun accident three months ago.'
'Then how do you manage to keep food for the babies?'
'Indeed, I can't.'
'Whatever are you going to do with them?'
'I'm going to give them to you, Doctor.'
When we got under way it was rough, and the babies made such a noise
that the helmsman stuck his head into the chartroom, which was directly
behind the wheelhouse, to see what could be the matter.
'What are you going to do with those, sir?'
'Shh. They're blind and quite useless. When we get outside, we'll drop
them over the rail.'
He stared at me for a second before he turned back to his wheel. A few
minutes later in popped his head again.
'Excuse my being so bold, but don't throw them over the side. We've got
eight of our own, but I guess my wife'll find a place for those two.'
I did not throw them overboard; neither did I send them to the home of
that modern saint. I simply added them to my collection. When they were
old enough, we sent them to the School for the Blind in Halifax. On
their return to us, Dr. Andrews operated and gave partial sight to both
of them. For some years they were industrial teachers at one of our
little centres on the Coast. They can see colour, read very large print,
distinguish faces, and run about the rocks by themselves—pleasures
which were denied them until they were twenty years old.
Two years ago one of those twins married a fine young fisherman, and
last summer as soon as we had anchored in her harbour she climbed over
the rail of the _Strathcona_. Proudly she showed me her baby—a fine,
healthy little boy. As I complimented her she said, 'He don't seem to
take much notice.' A cold chill went over me as I asked her to let me
have a look at the child. It was as I had feared. He had been born blind
in both eyes.
In various ways my adopted family grew at an alarming rate, once it
became known that we were acting the rôle of unofficial residuary
legatee for derelict children. A little while ago we were sailing across
a large bay with a crew of half a dozen college boys who had come 'down
north' for the summer at their own cost and charges, because they had
discovered that it is more fun pulling a lame dog out of a hole than
'putting' a small white ball into one. When we landed, we started to
wander around the deserted headland. Just outside the poverty-stricken
little village, we passed the doorless and windowless frame of a log
cabin perched up against the face of the sheer cliff. Curiosity led us
to peep inside, though there were no signs of life. Suddenly one of the
boys, looking up at a hole in the low ceiling, exclaimed, 'Why, there's
someone looking down at us through that chink.' In a trice he was up on
the lofting. 'There are four naked kiddies up here,' he called down.
An hour later our sentry, who had been left to watch the cabin, reported
that a woman with a baby in her arms had gone in at the door. She told
us that her husband had gone north three months before and nothing had
been heard of him since. When we found the log cabin, she had been out
looking for berries on the hill-side to feed the nestlings.
'What can we do to help?' we asked as she brought the children down from
the rafters and out into the sunshine.
'For God's sake, take them and feed them. I can do no more.'
Vermin, the inevitable accompaniment of poverty and squalor, had not
been avoided even though the children had no rags to cover them. How
could we take them back in our jolly-boat, over seven miles of open sea,
without clothing? In a second every boy with me had his coat off, and a
well-clad child in his arms. What a credential of modern youth that act
was! When we left, the poor mother brought up the rear of our procession
carrying the baby. To-day that little family is fed, clothed, going to
school, and started on the road to a useful life.
So the tale has grown. Some children came to us because they were
orphans, some because they were not. One of our boys came from Cape
Chidley itself; others came from as far south and west as Bay of Islands
in Southern Newfoundland. I am constantly asked, 'But why do you have a
Children's Home in Newfoundland? Can't the Newfoundlanders look out for
their own dependent children?' Northern and Southern Newfoundland should
be differentiated from the point of view of climate, education, and
opportunity. We built our Children's Home at the north end of the
northern peninsula of Newfoundland for reasons of efficiency and
economy, but the children who make up the family are largely drawn from
the Labrador side of the Straits of Belle Isle. Often also, the
destitution of a family of Newfoundlanders makes it impossible for us to
leave children in such poverty. We have now a second collection in
Labrador, the headquarters being the Lockwood School at Cartwright.
During the passing years the building expanded with the increasing
family. At one vital point in its career its capacity was doubled by the
generosity of one of our volunteers, Mr. Francis Sayre, son-in-law of
the late President Wilson. But the building was made of green wood, it
contracted with our very necessary central heating, the roof leaked, the
windows rattled, the snow blew in around the doors and windows and
seemed to filter between the very clapboards themselves. Our bills for
heating were enormous. So was the drain on strength and patience of the
good lady volunteers for whom the problem of caring for fifty-odd
children was acute enough anyway without the additional worry of frozen
pipes, no proper day nursery for the little children, no isolation room
for the sick, no attic storage, rats and mice, no storeroom for food.
How sorely and how long we needed a concrete building properly planned,
large enough to accommodate the numbers whom we had to turn away for
lack of space, easily kept warm, with separate wings for boys and girls,
and a crèche for the babies! And this is how we finally got it.
We worked for it. We calculated that the cheapest way to build a
fire-proof, wind-and-damp-proof building would be to build it of
concrete blocks. So we estimated the number of blocks needed as nearly
as possible, and, rating the cost of each at twenty-five cents, we set
out and collected 'Bricks.' William Adams Delano, of New York, one of
our directors, president of the Architects' Institute, drew the plans
freely. Some friends gave special fittings, some gave memorial beds, and
one or two gave memorial rooms. Everyone locally gave work, and as soon
as the universities finished commencement a number of students from
Princeton, with Professor William Gillespie, professor of higher
mathematics, came north and volunteered to excavate and install the
foundation, while all the mechanical engineering was looked after by one
of our own boys from North Labrador. It took two years to finish it—our
seasons for building are short—but it surely has come to stay, and
hundreds of children have already had 'the gospel preached to them' by
the loving care of ladies who are living in the North, not for what they
can get out of it, but what they can bring to it. If my reader doubts
what such a home means to the helpless and hopeless, do come and see. We
have arranged now for four special steamers to come on a round trip all
the way from Quebec to see the wonders of the Coast and to visit at
least four of our many stations each summer. You can stay over a
boat—you can enjoy salmon and trout fishing, and other things besides!
One of our worst difficulties has been the half-orphan—a child with the
father or mother living; more often the helpless mother having to be
left behind. I still look back with sorrow on the day when we took three
little children whom we found starving, as their father had died. I had
to leave the eldest boy behind, as otherwise the mother would have had
no one to 'fend for her.' The three children grew to be fine, healthy
young people. One now lives close by us, has a charming home and lovely
children of her own. But the lad left behind was never able to provide
food enough, and he gradually failed and finally died of tuberculosis.
Whether he starved himself to give his mother food, I do not know.
Only last year one of my colleagues visited by chance on one of his
_komatik_ rounds a poor family with seven children. He found the father
stretched on the floor by the stove, unable to speak. My friend rushed
off to get the food which the family had been too proud to ask for, but
the father died four days later. His wife insisted that he had gone
without food himself for the sake of the children.
To Labrador's way of thinking, God is the Giver of all children. Man's
responsibility is merely to find food and clothing for them as best he
can, once they are in the world. If these 'gifts of God' suffer, or are
a burden to other people besides the parents, that is a trick of fate.
It is the philosophy of the ignorant and the thoughtless—almost the
animal—and it makes the lives of the women of the Coast terribly hard.
For years, owing to the lack of any boarding-schools in the country and
owing to our very scattered population, we were sometimes obliged to
accept bright children from isolated homes and give them a chance at
'learning,' even though they had both parents living, and so had not the
claim of being orphans, half or whole. Whether the parents in these
cases have been able to pay anything or not, the children are always
worth the expenditure. Indeed, the children in our orphanages do most of
the work themselves; and thanks to the invaluable help of the Needlework
Guild of America, through its Labrador Branch, the clothing problem has
been taken care of.
To-day, after forty years, we have orphanage-boarding-schools at four
widely separated centres, where any child can be brought. From this
flotsam and jetsam of a barren Coast, with 'nothing worthy to offer
mankind,' have come some of our most efficient and loyal helpers. The
students of Yale University are responsible for one of these centres,
Princeton for another, and friends in Chicago for a third, while St.
Anthony Orphanage is a truly international effort.
We rejoice to reflect that the problem of under-privileged children in
Labrador can be solved as long as our schools and orphanages carry on.
The one test for efficient surgery in these practical days is its 'end
results.' Surely that is God's test for our lives. Certainly it is not
only the gauge of the value of the outlay in child life, but its
justification and in nine cases out of ten its more than satisfying
reward.
CHAPTER XIII
OPEN SESAME
THE only real joy of possession is the power which it confers for a
larger life of service. When politics and finance, international as well
as national, are actuated by that conviction, permanent peace will
become possible. The solution of the problem of inducing the millennium
is most likely to be furthered by wise and persevering work among the
children. The children of Labrador are the hope of the future of this
country as they are that of every land. Their true education—the
leading them out of themselves—to fit them for wise citizenship has
been cruelly neglected during the few generations of Labrador's history.
It is a truism that the illiteracy, backwardness, ignorance, and
superstition of large numbers of the inherently fine Anglo-Saxon stock
who make up the population of Labrador and North Newfoundland are their
greatest handicap in a life already made difficult enough by its
physical environment.
The denominational spirit fostered by compulsory sectarian schools is
terribly emphasized in Newfoundland and Labrador. All moneys granted by
the Government for education are handed to the separate denominations
for sectarian schools. Such a course is almost writing ourselves down as
still living in the Middle Ages, when the clergy had a monopoly of
polite learning. In our sparsely populated country it means that one
often found a Roman Catholic, a Church of England, a Methodist, and a
Salvation Army school, all in one village—and no school whatever in an
adjoining hamlet. I recall that in St. Anthony, where there was already
a Church of England school, a Methodist school, and a Salvation Army
school, at one time we were menaced with the threat of a fourth—like a
new Egyptian plague, but entailing more dangerous and more permanent
results.
We were sure that the young lives entrusted to us were having as good
medical care for their bodies as we could provide. We determined to have
that paralleled for their minds if we could manage it, regardless of
what the parents of the village children did. Is not true religion a
thing of the intellect as well as of the heart? Fancy trying to
inculcate it by 'two periods a week of forty minutes each devoted to
sectarian teaching'! My picture of myself at the age of seven sitting on
a bench for forty minutes twice a week learning to be religious made me
sympathize with Scrooge when the Ghost of the Past was paying him a
visit.
Despite the fact that there is nothing so reactionary as a religious
prejudice well embedded, and although our efforts to have the local
schools combine had signally failed, we determined to start a school of
our own. Unfortunately, the only building available was not so good as
the accommodation which we have provided for our pigs—for fat pork is
rightly considered a _sine qua non_ down north.
One of the great lacks in child development on the Coast, particularly
deplorable to an Anglo-Saxon, was the absence of games and toys. One of
the first things we noticed on the Labrador was the absence of dolls;
and though in our second season we brought out and distributed a
trunkful, we found that the dolls were nail-high on the walls as
ornaments, and well out of reach of the children.
The generous help of trained volunteers, especially a trained
kindergartener, enabled us to introduce organized play for the first
time. It caught like wildfire among the children, and it was refreshing
to see them in groups by the roadside memorizing 'All on the Train for
Boston.'
Our fishermen have definite, though often singular, ideas of what
Almighty God does and does not allow; and among those pursuits
unquestionably on the local 'Index' dancing holds the first place. The
laxity of foreigners on this article of the Credo is proverbial.
Immediately one realized that the local Solons judged our kindergarten
to be introducing the thin edge of the wedge of wickedness, and that our
venture would come to grief unless such rumours could be nipped in the
bud, I sought out the two local clergy. Together we knocked at the door
of the kindergarten. The first game was irreproachable—every child was
sitting on the floor. The next, however, aroused the suspicion of the
vigilance committee, for the children were choosing partners. Even so no
condemnation resulted, as the boys chose boys exclusively, and the
girls, girls. Next we were steered successfully past possible reefs of
error in a game entitled 'Piggie-wig and Piggie-wee.' Our circulation
was just beginning to operate again in its normal tempo when we were
told that the whole company would 'join hands and move round in a
circle'—to music. With our own eyes we saw boys and girls alternating,
hand held in hand—and to the undeniably secular libretto of 'Looby
Loo.' Moreover, it was noted with pain and surprise that many of the
little feet actually left the ground. When we adjourned to a near-by
fish stage to discuss the matter, it was decided that all but 'Looby
Loo' could be excluded from the list of doubtfuls. This last, however,
had to be put to vote. It is a relief to be able to record that the
resultant ballot was unanimously in favour of non-interference. From
both pulpits the following Sunday the kindergarten received the official
sanction of the Church.
[Illustration: LADY GRENFELL, 1927]
Having at the beginning of our educational experiment no funds whatever,
we had to look for volunteer teachers of all grades. The Government
would make no special grant toward our Union school, and even the _per
caput_ grant, to which we had thought we were entitled for the children
in our orphanage, had by law to go to the denomination to which their
parents had belonged.
On the occasion of taking the last census in Labrador, a well-dressed
stranger appeared in one of the little settlements. As it chanced the
stranger entered first the tilt of a very poor man with a large family
of eight children—all under twelve years of age. We regret to state
that the fisherman was not so loyal to his Church as to blind him to the
vision of possible material favours which might be obtained from the
visitor. At length in the conversation came the momentous question,
'What denomination do you belong to?'—obviously the crux of the matter
when it came to sharing up. The fisherman was on tenterhooks as he gazed
at the row of his eight unwashed and half-clad offspring, whose treacly
faces gaped open-mouthed at the guest. With sudden inspiration he
'plumped for safety' and answered, 'Half of 'em is Church of England,
and half of 'em is Methodists.'
At last the necessary three thousand dollars for a schoolhouse was
raised, and the building was erected under the direction of one of our
local boys who had studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. The
greater portion of the original building and the additions which have
since been made to it were given by a lady in Chicago, who also donated
a sufficient endowment to help with the salaries of two teachers.
Further to awaken the faculties of our young people, we built a large
upper hall to the school building and a library of some thousand of
books. The hall gave both space for physical drill and room for
entertainments put on by the children themselves.
Being an unrecognized school and so far off, it was a long time before
it occurred to us to bring scholars up from our northern district.
Another forward step was taken when we realized that we should close one
channel of criticism to our enemies if we proved that our school could
successfully compete with theirs in their own annual qualifying
examinations. For already outsiders had begun telling the local people
that the children attending our school could not pass the Colony's
examinations because we wasted their time on 'foolishness.' It became
evident, moreover, that some of our older scholars could obtain useful
and remunerative employment in the country only if they held
certificates as having passed the local examinations. We therefore
decided to engage teachers trained in the country and instituted the
curriculum of the Colony. Since that day this has been modified, as we
decided that for most of our young girls cooking was more profitable
than Latin, and that courses in tinning salmon or repairing boots were
of even greater value to our lads than the intricacies of French
irregular verbs.
Education as we see it means the training that enables one most
completely to correspond to one's environment, together with the
development of a healthy body, and primarily of a spirit which makes
living to serve the world the first objective. At St. Anthony our
original school has grown until to-day it numbers over two hundred
children on its roll. At North-West River we have the Yale School, made
possible by the generosity of the students of Yale University, and for
two years run by a volunteer headmaster from that university. It now
takes care of eighty-five scholars. The Cartwright School, in large
measure the gift of a lady in Texas, has already forty students; while
our latest educational effort at St. Mary's River, the special charge of
students of Princeton University, opened recently with twenty-eight boys
and girls. We long for the day when we shall see a boarding-school at
Red Bay. It would not only be an educational blessing to that scattered
community and section of the Coast, but would serve as a stimulus to the
little weaving and industrial training school which we have been running
there for some years. At each of these centres, some proportion of the
scholars are permanent, the rest returning in summer to their isolated
homes, to learn there the daily duties of their own environment.
The Moravian Missions among the Eskimos have for many years run an
excellent boarding-school for some thirty-five children at Makkovik, and
Commander MacMillan has recently started a school for the Eskimos at the
more northerly Moravian station at Nain.
One day I met a very small boy walking unconcernedly down the gang-plank
of the mail steamer, lugging over his back a heavy kitbag.
'Who are you?' I asked.
'I'm Percy.'
'Where do you come from?'
'North Labrador, sir.'
'What have you come to St. Anthony for?'
'To get learning.'
He was a small orphan from a remote village of our northern Coast. He
had come along with all he owned, because he had heard that children
would be given a chance at the Grenfell School. To-day he is married and
doing well as a trapper and fisherman, having had his 'schooling' and
returned to his own village in the Far North. Only this last summer
(1931) he entertained us for tea there in his cosy little cottage at
Hebron.
Many years ago we were running south from our long northern trip before
a fine leading wind. Suddenly we noticed a small boat with an improvised
flag standing right out across our bows. Thinking that at least it was
some serious surgical case, we ordered 'Down sail and heave her to,'
annoying though we felt it to have the delay. A solitary white-haired
old man climbed with difficulty over our rail. 'Good-day. What's the
trouble? We're in a hurry.' The old man most courteously doffed his cap
and stood holding it in his hands. 'I wanted to ask you, Doctor,' he
said slowly, 'if you had any books you could lend me. We can't get
anything to read here.' A feeling of humiliation almost immediately
replaced the angry reply which had sprung to my lips. Which is really
charity, skilfully to remove his injured leg if he had had one, or to
afford him the pleasure and profit of a good book?
'Haven't you got any books?'
'Yes, sir, I've got two, but I've read them through and through long
ago.'
'What are they?'
'One is the _Works_ of Josephus,' he answered, 'and the other is
Plutarch's _Lives_.'
He was soon bounding away over the seas in his little craft, the happy
possessor of one of our moving libraries.
The Carnegie libraries have emphasized a fact that is to education and
the colleges what social work is to medicine and the hospitals. Our
faculties, like our jaws, atrophy if we do not use them to bite with.
Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Carnegie and others, we now have about
seventy-five of these library boxes, containing a selection of some
fifty books each. The hospital steamer each summer moves these
peripatetic libraries one more stage along the Coast. The co-operation
of teachers and librarians who come and give us splendid voluntary
service more than doubles the usefulness of the libraries as it does
that of the workers themselves in their special spheres. The world's
workers have everything to gain by co-operation, whatever their field,
and whether it is a question of nationalism or internationalism. When
men pull together, efficiency increases in geometrical progression.
For years we were not able through shortage of funds to attack the
problem of the education of the small groups of children in our most
isolated little settlements, many of which are never touched by the
Government mail steamers. As Mahomet could not possibly come to the
mountain, it had to go to him. A lady, a Doctor of Philosophy, whose
life had been spent in teaching, and who therefore might have been
excused from discontinuing that function during her long vacations, came
down at her own expense to one of these tiny villages to teach for the
summer. With loyal devotion she has continued and enlarged that work
during all the intervening twenty years. She built up a band of
volunteer teachers, who come each summer to these remote hamlets, live
with the fisher people in their cottages, and gather their pupils daily
wherever they can find a vacant room.
It has always helped us 'down North' to remember the stand which
Archbishop Ireland took for public schools. He knew full well that it
requires the fabulous Jack to overcome the hoary giants of prejudice and
ingrained custom. A Church of England clergyman whom we were influential
in bringing out to the Coast started an undenominational boarding-school
in his district, assuming this care in addition to his many other
burdens connected with his far-flung parish. When, after years of
splendid service on the Labrador, he was obliged to return to England
owing to ill-health, the Grenfell Association took over the school.
To-day I am more than ever persuaded that a chain of undenominational
boarding-schools should be started, which would react for the great
benefit of the country.
Who would ever think of giving an Episcopal pill or a Methodist plaster?
My convictions on the subject of education in the North are no less firm
to-day than they were twenty-two years ago when I wrote to my wife:
'Ignorance is the worst cause of suffering on our North Coast, and our
"religion" is fostering it. True, it has denominational schools, but
these are used to bolster up special ecclesiastical bodies, and are not
half so good as Government schools would be. The "goods delivered" in
the schools are not educational in the best sense, and are all too often
inefficiently offered. Instead of making the children ambitious to go on
learning through life, they make them tired. There is no effort to
stimulate the play side, and in our north end of the Colony there are no
trades taught, no new ideas, no manual training—it is all so-called
"arts" and Creeds.'
Once we had assumed schools and orphanages as an interpretation of the
maxim, 'Let the little ones come unto Me,' it became imperative to find
industrial outlets for the more promising students, to enable them to
make their lives useful to their country and satisfactory to themselves.
This special branch of supplementary education has been under the entire
charge of Lady Grenfell from its very inception. It has been no small
responsibility, not only to raise the funds for sending some twenty boys
and girls out each year to the United States or Canada, but to arrange
for their scholarships, their transportation, their clothing problems,
their eyes and their teeth, their adjustments to a new _milieu_—in
fact, all the vagaries and vicissitudes of so large and so complex and
so scattered a 'family.' Moreover, she assumed this in addition to the
cares of our own family, the constant help she gives me personally in
every branch of the work, and the practical interest she has always
taken in so important a problem as the Industrial Department.
This Supplementary Educational Department has always kept in mind the
elimination of imported workers, remote eventuality though that may be.
The aim has been to train the young people along technical lines as far
as ever possible, and not to give a so-called classical education.
Moreover, it has always been made clear to each student going out to
England, Canada, or the United States that he is being offered this
opportunity, not for his own sake, but that he may return and be a
channel for helping his own people more efficiently because of what he
has been able to become. Considering the lure of the easier life which
civilization holds before the minds of these young people, we consider
that the proportion of the students who have maintained their idealism
and their love for their own country so strongly as to make them return
is very creditable to their fine Anglo-Saxon heritage. Of the hundred
students whom Lady Grenfell and her colleagues have sent out, over
eighty have returned to their own land. They are now serving the Coast,
some as mechanical engineers, electricians, plumbers, shoemakers,
teachers, dressmakers, cabinet-makers, trained nurses, dietitians,
stenographers, managers of little co-operative stores, industrial
teachers; while we can boast at least one tanner, one tinsmith, and two
clergymen in the number. Both boys and girls have always been required
to work during their term of education, to earn as much as possible
toward their expenses. Before being sent out, moreover, each one is
always required to promise that, in consideration of the chance he is
getting, he will return to Labrador or North Newfoundland and give at
least two years' service—of course they must be paid for this—to their
country and people. Once they have remained for two years and seen how
much they can offer for the amelioration of their own environment, the
ones with the high ideal of service—and they are in the
majority—remain for life.
Of course we have had failures. Human nature is the same regardless of
degrees of latitude. Some of the colleges and technical schools to which
we sent these students, generous as those schools have invariably been
in giving us scholarships and every possible help, gave them everything
which may count as education except this very inspiration to use what
they had received for the benefit of those who had not had their
advantages. It was of no interest to us whether Jack should wear a black
tail-coat and a top-hat, or an oilskin and a sou'wester; and we
certainly did not wish Janie to add to her troubles by getting the habit
of wearing shoes with silly heels two inches high, or using lipstick, or
any other artificial adornment to her healthy and bonnie face.
If you were to visit the Coast to-day and question any one of the
students who has returned, you would not find one who would admit that
he had lost anything, even so far as the material things of life are
concerned. Rather they would tell you that, having been 'led out of
themselves,' they had found through that education those opportunities
for service to their fellow-men which have altered their lives, and for
which they can never be sufficiently grateful to the kind friends whom
they do not know personally in most instances, but whose vision and
whose generosity have made the new life possible for them.
A boy came to me one day on my ship when my surgical clinic was over.
No, he did not want to trouble me for medicine or surgery. What he
wanted, like Percy, was 'learning.' He was sixteen years old and a bit
of a carpenter. He could read a little, as his Scotch mother had taught
him. When I asked him if he could pay for his education, he said, 'No,
Doctor, but I'll work ten hours a day as a carpenter if you will give me
one hour a day teaching.'
He was our first 'outside' student. The Pratt Institute in Brooklyn gave
us a scholarship for him. That was thirty years ago. In 1927, when we
built our first reinforced concrete, fire-proof hospital, with electric
light, central heating, and modern plumbing, we did not send to New York
or any other outside place to secure a master mason, mechanic,
electrician, plumber, or one 'educated' man. This boy, having become our
chief mechanic, took entire charge of the construction of the building.
The special technical workers under him were also local boys, trained in
the States or Canada. The Governor came down for the opening of the
building. There was not one leak in the plumbing, not one crack in the
plaster, not one short circuit in the lighting. Entirely self-taught,
this man plays the organ in church. He is also Government surveyor,
supervises our machine shop, a repair dock, a furniture-making
department. As his hobbies, he runs the short-wave wireless and a
Marconi of six-hundred-metre wave-length by rule of thumb, and acts as
one of the chief directors of the fishermen's local co-operative store.
All three of his sons have been given supplementary outside education
through the Grenfell Association, and two of them, grown to manhood in
their turn, have returned to the Coast, to find their life-work and
opportunity there.
CHAPTER XIV
WHO HATH DESIRED THE SEA?
OUR fishermen never pray for ships to be wrecked. There is some little
doubt amongst those of us who own boats as to whether such a prayer
might not prove a boomerang. However, I have known sincerely religious
men pray that, if there was going to be a shipwreck, at least it might
be in their neighbourhood!
On one occasion, when our cattle were so short of food that it looked as
if they must starve that winter, a large steamer loaded with five
thousand tons of barley ran on the rocks a few hundred yards from our
barn. We did not suggest to the skipper that it was an answer to prayer,
even if we thought that it was; especially as there have been so many
wrecks on our Coast that we might have obtained a bad name as wreckers.
The people were genuinely surprised when I added to my other
responsibilities that of surveyor of shipping for Lloyd's, north of
latitude fifty-two, as well as commissioner for wrecks. The Graveyard of
the Atlantic was at that time said to be Cape Race in Southern
Newfoundland, many hundreds of miles to the south of us. I remember five
steamers being piled up on the top of one another at one time there. New
inventions, such as the wireless, direction signals, and the fathometer,
have altered all that. Now the direct route through the Straits of Belle
Isle and the Gulf of St. Lawrence is no longer nearly as exciting as of
old.
The S.S. _Mexico_, with a cargo of general food supplies, was our first
experience of wrecks. She ran full speed into an almost perpendicular
cliff on the west end of Belle Isle in a dense fog and immediately sank.
Till winter set in, barrels of flour, uninjured except for a half-inch
layer of dough coating the outside, were picked up floating to and fro
along the Coast. For weeks fishermen with improvised corkscrews mounted
on long poles were using her hold as a magnified bran pie, and hooking
up hams, cheeses, kegs of butter, and whatever came within reach of
their tentacles!
The next large wreck was the _Mariposa_, a beautiful boat with many
passengers aboard, bound from Montreal to England. She ran on the
western ledge of Forteau Point, and was picked clean by the local
fishermen before the close of open water. Incidentally, our own nautical
outfits profited, as gear useful to us but valueless to small boats was
brought to our neighbouring hospital in lieu of fees. Many other wrecks
have followed as the years have gone by. The S.S. _Greetlands_, laden
with cattle food, and two large Norwegian vessels with cargoes of apples
in barrels, and flour. Then, just as one winter came on, the S.S.
_Nordfelt_, with five thousand tons of coal in her hold, stranded and
stuck on a flat reef a mile offshore. She is there still, now many years
later. Hundreds of tons of coal have we purchased for our hospitals and
steamers, the people's dog-teams hauling it over the ice to the shore.
Next came the great _Scotsman_, wrecked on the east end of Belle Isle
one bitter day before Christmas. Nine lives were lost trying to land on
the island. Our fishermen, venturing out in all kinds of small craft,
saved many valuable bales of plush, cretonnes, assorted silks, and other
Christmas goods which were bound out from England to Montreal. All
winter long the local churches were brightened by a plethora of plush
whenever the congregation gathered for worship.
The S.S. _Baucis_ was another 'opening of the windows of heaven,'
according to Labrador's, but not Lloyd's, version of the incident. One
winter, just when all the fishermen were wondering what they would do
for flour, this great French steamer, with five thousand tons of whole
wheat in bulk, ran high and dry on a flat reef just east of Blanc
Sablon. All that was necessary was to put your ship alongside her hull
and bore a hole in it with an acetylene torch to have a stream of wheat
pouring into any receptacle you provided. The _Strathcona_ was filled
twice over, bunks and all, and many of our poor benefited enormously.
The gain was double-barrelled, since they had to devise methods of
grinding the whole wheat, generally with stones, and so were forced to
use whole wheat bread, which they consider dirty and unfit for human
consumption. Usually not only will they refuse to purchase it, but the
Newfoundland Government dare not give it out in their 'able-bodied poor
relief supplies,' for fear of losing face with their constituents.
The _Erling_, the _Rose of Torridge_, the _Walrus_, the _Windsor Lake_,
the _Viking_, and many more flash across my memory, their ghosts always
rising to remind us of them as I steam past their last resting-places on
stormy nights. One of the most important was the wreck of His Majesty's
first-class cruiser _Raleigh_, a boat worth five million dollars. She
ran ashore almost on the bones of another of His Majesty's ships which
had unwillingly accepted the hospitality of the same reef thirty years
previously. The _Raleigh_ became a total loss. Thirteen of her crew were
drowned trying to land. The hereditary zeal of our people for salving
was considerably cooled by the captain, who immediately forbade the
shore people to touch anything. Uncle Silas was telling the astonished
crowd, when I went ashore next morning, that he was only picking up an
arm-chair which had washed ashore when a bullet from the ship whizzed
into the mud under his nose and almost hit his fingers. For years, one
of the sights of the voyage across the Atlantic by this route was the
wreck of this great battleship still standing right side up just as she
went on the rocks, and looking as if she were steaming into the bay.
After eight years the Navy blew her up, but even to-day the people are
making useful money by collecting brass and copper which have been blown
off her hull.
By far the most dramatic wreck, however, was that of the large new
Hudson's Bay Company steamer, the _Bay Rupert_, loaded with every
variety of supplies for all the northern posts of that great Company.
She and her cargo were valued, all told, at approximately two million
dollars. She ran on an uncharted shoal in the open Atlantic, fourteen
miles directly out from one of our northern capes, called Cape Harrigan.
The conical rock poked its sharp nose through her engine-room floor, but
she rested otherwise on a flat shelf, her bow hanging over one end in
eighteen fathoms of water and her stern over the other in twenty
fathoms. The passengers were at once conveyed in her beautiful power
lifeboats to the nearest desert island, some nine miles distant, where
with the lumber which they were carrying, and with cattle and supplies,
they were made comfortable till help came. Oddly enough, that barren
island had always been known as the 'Farmyards,' but never a cockerel
had crowed there until the arrival of this ship-wrecked crowd, bringing
with them several crates of chickens. When the sea was rough, a heavy
breaker in eight feet of water at low tide sent huge volumes of water
right over the doomed ship. It was one of the most wonderful sights
imaginable.
Wireless messages were sent to me as Lloyd's Agent. Alas, we were
hundreds of miles away at St. Anthony, just awaiting the arrival of the
Governor, a beloved friend, to open the new hospital. By wiring to St.
John's, the Government's large and fast mail steamer, the S.S. _Kyle_,
was soon on the scene of the wreck and collected safely all the stranded
people.
As we were steaming north three weeks later, we suddenly sighted a
strange steamer on the horizon, apparently broken down. It proved to be
the same S.S. _Bay Rupert_, still transfixed like St. Simon Stylites on
his pole. We paid many visits to the abandoned ship, and my crew of
'wops' thoroughly enjoyed the dangerous adventures of those days. We
salved a great many supplies of much value to the Coast. Every variety
of goods, from hardwood sledges to barrels of gunpowder, and from new
guns and rifles to cases of chewing-gum, was included. Above all, we got
the most wonderful series of moving pictures from every point of
vantage, including from her own masthead, Varick Frissell climbing up
the mast and balancing on the truck while he took them. To help some of
the Eskimos of that northern section of the Coast, we mothered a number
of their small boats out to the wreck, and I was rewarded the first day
by catching a warrior incontinently beating open a box of T.N.T. with
the back of his axe, 'to look what was in it.'
None of us will ever forget the high living of those days when
_Strathcona_ lunches included Kraft's cheese, mango chutney, nuts,
oranges, and unlimited hams and tongues.
As it was my task from the bridge to keep an eye on the weather and on
the deserted _Strathcona_ anchored on the shoulder of the same shoal, I
had been able to collect much valuable hardwood, plate-glass windows,
and also a good deal of mahogany from the main staircase and lounge,
though later some of this had to be thrown overboard and towed to the
_Strathcona_ when our rowboat was already carrying a full load. From my
eyrie I could also watch the men working in the main hold, a necessary
precaution, as in reality the movements of our Eskimo visitors had
become almost as much of a source of anxiety to me as the weather.
Observing a large case which they had opened and promptly thrown aside,
I went down to examine it. One of the tins which it contained had been
opened with an axe. Out of it was oozing our delectable Kraft's cheese!
The inconsequential methods of the Eskimos in salving were amusing, when
they were not pitiable. Though they were fifteen miles out in the
Atlantic in small, open motor boats, they continually wasted time by
sitting around smoking, and filled the very limited carrying space in
their boats with anything from funnels to twisted iron rails. I asked
the honourable opener of the case why he had cast it aside. 'Me no
like,' he replied. The Eskimo told me afterward that he thought it was a
kind of soap gone bad.
On the bridge I discovered a beautiful bath in the captain's bedroom,
and yielding to temptation decided to try and salve it. After getting it
loose with great difficulty, I found that it would not pass through
either of the two doors leading out on the deck. However, by taking off
its legs and chopping a large hole through the sitting-room wall, then
removing the door and its hardwood lintel and uprights, we dragged the
prize out at last. The ship was at a considerable angle, and we and the
tub literally glissaded together down to the lee rails. Forty feet below
us lay the little boat. By that time it was too late to risk trying to
lower our latest booty into her, so I lashed it to the rail and left it,
hoping to reclaim it the next time we came aboard the wreck. However,
when we returned to look for it, it was gone—to the bottom of the deep
blue sea as we surmised.
A month later, long after the wreck had sunk, we happened to spy that
bath high up on a beach, near the spot where we had anchored. A Labrador
settler friend told us he had found it lashed to the rails and had
thought it was abandoned.
'But it was mine,' I argued. 'I can prove it. Here are the four legs I
unscrewed from it. Anyhow, what good can it possibly be to you?'
'Oh!' said he, 'I thought perhaps my wife might like to have a bath some
day.'
His home happens to be on the _komatik_ trail, and the pathos of the
bathless North overwhelmed us.
'It is yours, brother. Here are its legs. May it dispense its blessing
to many a weary traveller from your hospitable home!'
No one approached in enthusiasm Tommy, our small cabin-boy, whom we
turned loose into the holds each morning. His particular _metier_ proved
to be that of a ferret in a rabbit-hole. One day, just as we started for
the wreck, we had struck so hard on a half-sunken case that it nearly
proved fatal to the thin planks of our little boat. Hauling the case
alongside, it proved to be full of chocolate plaques done up in silver
paper. When we sampled it, we had to let the case go, for the salt water
had dissolved out all the sugar—as had happened to all the cases both
of the hard candies and the sugar itself. We were grateful enough to
have escaped this new danger from chocolate, but its effect on Tommy was
only to make him register a vow. A little later he came to my eyrie and
reported the discovery of a large new section into which he had crawled.
To prove, his assertion that the articles in it had not yet been damped
by the sea, he deposited before me half a dozen card-board boxes
containing new woollen sweaters and ladies' knitted caps. The entrance
to his burrow was only just above the water-line. It was pitch-dark
inside, and the opening too small to induce me to try to enter. I
provided him with some matches, and he disappeared again down the hole,
exactly like a second Alice in Wonderland. He returned after a few
minutes with some chewing-gum, which was a new delicacy to him, and
therefore untouched; but from the state of his face it was evident that
the same had not held true of some dry chocolate.
There might have been 'a better 'ole' and had there been time we might
have 'gone to it,' but under the circumstances Tommy had no trouble in
finding disciples. Soon a goodly stream of dry new clothing,
interspersed with bars of chocolate, came filtering through the
passageway and was quickly removed to the deck to keep dry. At that
moment the crew of a passing fishing schooner came aboard and asked
permission to share in the salvage. This was more than gladly accorded;
but when it came to permission to go down the private rabbit-hole, Tommy
insisted on his proprietary rights and maintained them in the face of
all comers, even though I had to return to my vantage-point that I might
endeavour to forestall our all being salved into Davy Jones's locker in
one glorious debacle.
At length a heavy gale broke suddenly upon us late one afternoon. We
were on board the wreck at the time, with not one soul left on the
_Strathcona_, which was anchored a few hundred yards away on the top of
the peak which formed the reef. She had broken loose and drifted off
twice before, and we had been exceedingly fortunate to overtake her. So
great was the opportunity to salve necessities that once again we had
failed to take warning. Many Eskimos were with us at the time, and we at
once ordered all of them to make for the land, which was fully fourteen
miles away. Our dory was loaded when the storm hit us and we sent her
back to the _Strathcona_, which she eventually reached after a furious
battle with the rising gale and sea.
Our only other boat, a small lifeboat belonging to the wreck, was
alongside. We were lowering an enormous four-sheave iron block into her
by means of old ropes which we had cut from the rigging. The boat was
directly below us, looking a mere speck, so far was she from the upper
deck from which we were working. Suddenly there was a cry of horror—the
ropes had broken!!! This meant that our only possible hope of escape was
gone. Our dory had no chance whatever of getting back to us, and the
_Strathcona_ was already drifting off the ledge where we had anchored
her. But as suddenly as the rope had parted, the tiny boat shot up
apparently from the ship's side, and we saw the mass of iron disappear
into the angry waves, sinking between the lifeboat and the big iron wall
of the _Bay Rupert's_ side. It ripped away and carried with it to the
bottom only a foot or two of the boat's gunwale. To climb down a
dangling rope into a small boat and get away safely from a steamer's
perpendicular side in a rough sea is a task which has to be experienced
to be realized. Our boat was made fast by the double rope of one of the
ship's falls to supplement her painter, for, if she were to break away
leaving us hopelessly marooned, we would pass out of the vale of tears
and no one ever be the wiser. Indeed, in this fight Old Neptune had one
more good try—a great onrushing wave lifted the boat half-way up to the
deck where we stood, drove her bow through the loop above the block, and
then precipitately fell away, leaving our last hope dangling high in the
air, literally clinging on by her eyelids. We had no illusions that the
loop could hold her long. If she fell out of it, she must certainly
capsize and sink. But the miracle happened. Almost immediately a heavy
rebound swell swept back along the whole length of the iron wall of the
_Bay Rupert's_ sides, and our little boat lay in the water again right
side up, actually laughing up at us.
Even after getting away, our troubles were far from over, for picking up
the _Strathcona_ with a loaded boat and only two old oars proved a
dangerous game. In order to save the lifeboat, we had to tow her all the
way to land, full of water, which was possible only because she had two
air-tanks. Then there was our promise to shepherd home the Eskimo boats.
We felt that we must do this, as the storm was growing more violent each
minute, and the darkness denser. The drag of the submerged lifeboat
behind our little steamer now proved a not unmitigated evil, for as it
was we overtook the last two motor boats still some miles out from land,
and had to slow down and shoo them in, like chickens into a coop.
As the entrance to the tiny harbour, of which we had made a special
survey, lay right along the big cape, it offered us not only the best
anchorage, but some miles less to go, so all the boats headed for it.
The opening is literally little wider than the ship and the depth of the
water only seven fathoms, while the channel itself is not straight. We
were well aware that there was yet one more thrill which there was no
escaping. The uncharted shoals which we had to pass on the way were now
breaking furiously, so we managed to see them in good time. When at
length we got our anchors down and our beloved little ship was safely at
rest, our troubles were past. There we lay for five days, and, when the
storm was over, we climbed to the top of the cliffs and gazed out to sea
with our telescopes. The staunch old wreck was no longer visible. Her
buffetings were over. She had fought a good fight, though as usual
Father Neptune won in the end.
Early one summer we had a very close squeak of losing the _Strathcona_.
While we were trying one morning to get out of a harbour, a sudden
breeze of wind came down upon us, drove in an enormous ice-floe and
pinned us tight, so that we could not move an inch. The pressure of the
ice became more severe moment by moment, and meanwhile the ice between
us and the shore seemed to be imperceptibly melting away. We tried every
expedient we could think of to keep enough ice between us and the shore
rocks, to save the vessel being swept right over the rocky headland,
towards which the strong tidal current was steadily forcing us. To make
matters worse, we struck our propeller against a pan of ice and broke
off one of the flanges close to the shaft. It became breathlessly
exciting as the ship drew nearer and nearer to the rocks. The apex of
the cape was at last only a few yards ahead. There was only one ice-pan
between us and the cliffs and the pressure was terrible. We had hastily
put our boat out on the ice and some food and blankets in case our
steamer sank. Twisting around helplessly as if in the arms of a giant,
we were swept past the dangerous promontory, and to our infinite joy
carried out into the open Atlantic where there is plenty of sea room. We
only had to abandon our boat.
For years not a single island, harbour, reef, or cape had any lighthouse
to mark it, and many boats were unnecessarily lost as a result. Most of
our schooners are small. Many are old and poorly found in running-gear.
Their decks are crowded with boats, barrels, wood, and other
impedimenta, so that to reef or handle sails on a dark night is next to
impossible. Below they are often crowded with women and children going
north with their men for the summer fishery on the Labrador Shore. I
have often had to crawl on my knees to get at a patient, after climbing
down through the main hatch. These craft are quite unfitted for a rough
night at sea, especially as there are always icebergs or big ice-pans
about. So in the spring the craft all creep north along the land,
darting into harbours before darkness falls, and leaving before dawn if
the night proves 'civil.'
We had frequently written to the Government about this neglect of lights
for the Coast. But Labrador has no representative in the Newfoundland
Parliament, and legislators who never visited Labrador had unimaginative
minds. Year after year went by and nothing was done. So I spoke to
outside friends of the dire need for a light near Battle Harbour
Hospital. I have seen a hundred vessels come and anchor near by in a
single evening. When the money for the light was donated, our architect
designed the little building, and a friend promised to endow the effort,
so that the modest salary of the lighthouse keeper might be permanent.
The material was already cut and sent north when we were politely told
that the Government could not permit private ownership of lights—a very
proper decision, too. At the same time they told us that the first
Labrador lighthouse would be erected near Battle Harbour. This was done,
and the Double Island Light has been a veritable godsend to thousands of
fishermen since that day.
One hundred miles north, at Indian Tickle, a place also directly in the
run of all fishing schooners, a light was much needed. On a certain
voyage coming south with the fleet in the fall of the year, we had all
tried to make the harbour, but it shut down suddenly before nightfall
with a blanket of fog which you could almost cut with a knife. Being
inside many reefs and unable to make the open, we were all forced to
anchor. Where we were, none of us knew, for we had all pushed on for the
harbour as much as we dared. There were eleven riding-lights visible
around us when a rift came in the fog. We hoped against hope that we had
made the harbour. A fierce north-easter gathered strength as night fell,
and a mighty sea began to heave in. Soon we strained at our anchors in
the big seas and heavy water swept down our decks from stem to stern.
Our patients were dressed and our boats made ready. Gradually we missed
first one and then another of the riding-lights; and it was not
difficult to guess what had happened.
When daylight broke, only one boat was left—a large vessel called the
_Yosemite_—and she was drifting right down towards us. Suddenly she
touched a reef, turned on her side, and we saw the seas carry her over
the breakers, the crew hanging on to the channel plates on her bilge.
Steaming to our anchors saved us, but all the vessels went ashore and
became matchwood.
In the morning we made out the land, but before we could get our anchors
or slip them, our main steam pipe gave out and we had to blow down our
boilers. It became now a race between the engineers trying to repair the
damage and the shortening hours of daylight. On the result depended
quite possibly the lives of us all. I cannot remember one sweeter sound
than the raucous voice of the engineer calling out, just in the nick of
time, 'Right for'ard,' and then the signal of the engine-room bell in
our little wheel-house. The Government has since put a fine little light
on White Point, the very point off which we lay on that disastrous
night.
Farther north, close by our hospital at Indian Harbour, is a narrow
tickle known as the White Cockade. Through this most of the fishing
fleet must pass going both north and south. Here also we had planned for
a lighthouse. When we were forbidden to put our material at Battle
Harbour, we suggested moving it to this almost equally important point.
It fell under the same category of _verboten_, however, and soon the
Government put a good light there also. The fishermen, therefore,
suggested that we should offer our peripatetic, would-be lighthouse to
the Government for some new place each year.
In 1908 occurred the second real hurricane which I have ever seen. It
began on Saturday, July 28, with flat calm and sunshine alternating with
small, fierce squalls. Though we had a falling barometer, this deceived
us, and we anchored that evening in a shallow and unsafe open roadstead
about twenty miles from Indian Harbour Hospital. Fortunately, our
suspicions induced us to keep an anchor watch, whose warning made us get
up steam at midnight, and we brought up at daylight in the excellent
narrow harbour in which the hospital stands. The holding ground there is
deep mud in four fathoms of water, the best possible for us.
The fury of the breeze grew worse as the day went on. Every one of the
fishing boats in the harbour filled and sank with the driving water.
With the increase of violence of the weather, we got up steam and
steamed to our anchors to ease if possible the strain on our two chains
and shore lines—a web which we had been able to weave before it was too
late. By Sunday night the gale had blown itself away, and Monday morning
broke flat calm, with lovely sunshine, and only an enormous sullen
ground sea.
Knowing that there must be many comrades in trouble, we were early under
way, and, dancing like a bubble, we ran north, keeping as close inshore
as we could, and watching the coastline with our glasses. The coast was
littered with remains. Forty-one vessels had been lost; in one
uninhabited roadstead alone, some forty miles away from Indian Harbour,
lay sixteen wrecks. The shore here was lined with rude shelters made
from the wreckage of spars and sails, and in these the women were busy
cooking meals and 'tidying up' the shacks as if they had lived there
always.
One vessel, a large hardwood, well-fastened hull, we determined to save.
Her name was _Pendragon_. The owner was aboard—a young man with no
experience who had never previously owned a vessel. He was so appalled
at the disaster that he decided to have her sold piecemeal and broken
up. We attended the auction on the beach and bought each piece as it
came to the hammer. Getting her off was the trouble. We adopted tactics
of our own invention. Mousing together the two mastheads with a bight of
rope, we put on it a large hoop traveller, and to that fastened our
stoutest and longest line. Then, first backing down to her on the very
top of high water, we went full speed ahead. Over she fell on her side
and bumped along on the mud and shingle for a few yards. By repeated
jerks she was eventually ours, but leaking so like a basket that we
feared we should yet lose her. Pumps inside fortunately kept her free
till we passed her topsail under her, and, after dropping in sods and
peat, we let the pressure from the outside keep them in place. When
night fell, I was played out, and told the crew they must let her sink.
My two volunteer helpers, Albert Gould and Paul Matteson, however,
volunteered to pump all night.
While hunting for a crew to take her south, we came upon the wreck of a
brand-new boat, launched only two months previously. She had been the
pride of the skipper's life. We felt so sorry for him that we handed the
_Pendragon_ over for him to work out at the cost which we had paid for
the pieces.
With fifty-odd people aboard, and towing a long tail of nineteen fishing
boats, we eventually got back to Indian Harbour, where everyone joined
in helping our friends in misfortune till the steamer came and took them
south. They waved us farewell, and, quite undismayed, wished for better
luck for themselves another season. Proper charts of the Labrador were
then non-existent, like lighthouses, and we were eager to have an
adequate survey made.
Just after the big gale, His Excellency Sir William MacGregor, then
Governor, was good enough to come and spend a short time surveying on
our North Coast. He was an expert in this line, as well as being a
gold-medallist in medicine. I acted as pilot among other capacities on
that journey, and was unlucky enough to run the steamer full tilt on to
one of the only sandbanks on the coast in a narrow passage between some
islands and the mainland! The little _Strathcona_, following behind, was
in time to haul us off again, but the incident made the captain
naturally distrust my ability, and as a result he would not approach the
shore near enough for us to get the observations which we needed.
Although we went round Cape Chidley into Ungava Bay, I could not regain
his confidence sufficiently to go through the straits which I had myself
sounded and surveyed. So we accomplished it in a small boat, getting
good observations. Our best work, however, was done when His Excellency
was content to be our guest. The hospital on board was used for the
necessary instruments—four chronometers, two theodolites, guns,
telescopes, camp furniture, and piles of books and printed forms.
Many a time in the middle of a meal, some desired but to us unlucky star
would cross the prime vertical, and all hands had to go up on deck and
shiver while rows of figures were accumulated. Sir William told us that
he would 'rather shoot a star any time than all the game ever hunted.'
One night my secretary, Albert Gould, after sitting on a rock at a
movable table from five o'clock till midnight, came in, his joints
almost creaking with cold, and loaded with a large pile of figures which
he assured us would crush the life out of a monkey. My mate that year
was a stout and very short, plethoric person. When he stated that he
preferred surveying to fishing, as it was going to benefit others so
much, and that he was familiar with the joys of service, he was taken
promptly at his word. It was a hot summer. The theodolite was a
nine-inch one and weighed many pounds. We had climbed the face of a very
steep mountain called Cape Mugford, some three thousand feet high, every
inch of which distance we had to mount from dead sea-level. When at last
Israel arrived on the summit, he looked worried. He said that he had
always thought surveying meant letting things drop down over the ship's
side and not carrying ballast up precipices. He distinctly failed to
grasp where the joy of this kind of service came in—and noting his
condition, as he lay on the ground and panted, I decided to let it go at
that.
The Governor was a MacGregor and a Presbyterian, and was therefore a
believer in keeping Sunday as a day of rest. But after morning prayers
on the first fine day after nearly a week of fog, he decided that he had
had physical rest enough, and to get good observations would bring him
the recreation of spirit which he most needed. So he packed up for work,
and happened to light on the unhappy Israel to row him a mile or so to
the land. Iz was 'taken all aback.' He believed that you should not
strain yourself ever—least of all on Sundays. So from religious
scruples he asked to be excused, though he offered to row anyone ashore
if he was only going to idle the hours away. Israel subsequently
cultivated the habit of remaining in bed on Sundays—thereby escaping
being led into temptation, as even Governors would not be likely to go
and tempt him in his bunk.
I have had others refuse to help in really necessary work on Sunday. One
skipper would not get the _Strathcona_ under way in answer to a wireless
appeal to come to a woman in danger of dying from haemorrhage forty
miles distant. When we prepared to start without him, he told me that he
would go, but that it would be at the price of his soul and we would
have to be responsible. We went all the same. Yet keeping Sunday for a
day of rest I firmly believe to be a characteristic of infinite value to
our people.
Our charts, such as they were, were subsequently accepted by the Royal
Geographical Society, who generously invited me to lecture before them.
Later, in 1911, they were good enough to award me the Murchison Prize.
Much of the work was really due to Sir William, and as much of it as I
could put on him to the Sabbatarian Iz.
CHAPTER XV
NOW IT CAN BE TOLD
ON an Italian wall recently I saw posted one of Mussolini's epigrams. It
read, 'We must not be proud of our country for its history only, but
because of what _we_ are making it to-day.' We all know that the
irreducible minimum for the ideal country is that it should enable
everyone to have a home, however humble, to dwell in safety, and to be
able to earn a sufficiency. Under such circumstances any people could
live contentedly.
On our Coast, statistics of only a few years ago showed that one out of
every three deaths among the people was due to tuberculosis, while
approximately one out of every three _native_ babies dies before
reaching one year old. There were then no milk-producing animals in the
country except a couple of cows and a handful of goats, while the system
of barter trade and chronic poverty put artificial milk quite out of
reach of the fishermen. We had seen undernourished mothers keeping
wizened infants alive by chewing dry bread and so predigesting it, and
then feeding it to the baby from a spoon. They had discovered that then
the baby might survive until it was able to digest it itself. Those
mothers were all unconscious of the chemistry of their procedure, since
an infant of less than six months old has not the glands necessary to
enable it to convert the useless starch into assimilable sugar.
Here in a land with not one endemic disease such as malaria or yellow
fever, with pure, bracing air and plenty of sunshine, free from crowding
and human exhalations, our records each year showed true scurvy, hardly
known now elsewhere, untreated infantile paralysis, blindness from eye
ulcers, marasmic children, rickets, and almost every form of deficiency
disease. The tocsin MILK! MILK! MILK! echoed in our ears far more
insistently and frequently than the church or the school bell.
As there was not one single road in the country, every family had to
keep half a dozen big dogs for hauling firewood and for travelling in
winter. These were as hard to provide for as the rest of the family.
They had, however, developed the faculty of providing for themselves by
night. If I had to select an animal which has unquestionably evolved a
capacity since the last ice age, I should choose one of these dogs. They
are as resourceful as Al Capone and require a Sherlock Holmes to bring
them to justice.
A soft-hearted naturalist friend once sent me the most beautiful, white
husky dog from America. Admiral Peary had given it to him as a puppy,
but apparently it had not, as a grown dog, fitted into its environment.
A photograph showed it basking in the sun by a lovely brook in New
England. My friend was writing a story of the dog for children. He
wished it to end its days nobly serving humanity in a medical mission in
its homeland.
The morning after its arrival, one of my big dogs was found dead in the
dog-pen. The next day another followed suit. This time suspicion fell on
the white angelic vision which had been presented to us. He was given a
private apartment, and no more casualties occurred.
Later it was found that he had escaped one night, and, though in the
morning he presented the countenance of a white lamb, he also presented
a very suspicious shape. Better precautions were taken, and for the
nonce things in the village were peaceful. Then once more the angel
disappeared. This time he never came back—in the body. He had been shot
gorging on a neighbour's bull, which he had killed in the night on the
other side of the harbour. I never read his biography; but I am told
that in the last chapter he disappeared into the far frozen North in the
service of his fellow-countrymen. I only hope that wherever he is he has
not been accorded powers of aerial progression.
These dogs occasionally go hunting in packs exactly like wolves. I have
known them kill a large polar bear. One of our own team, a thoroughbred
husky, literally 'heard the call of the wild' and answered it. He
vanished and was given up for lost. One day a man from a near-by village
came to complain to me, as a magistrate, that on two separate occasions
a sheep had disappeared from his village, and that a wolf's tracks had
been seen on the snow. No wolves have been in that neighbourhood since
we came on the Coast. A baited trap was set and a couple of armed
sentries were hidden to keep watch. In due time a huge, stealthy black
shape stole out of the woods, attracted by the bait. Our men are
excellent snipers. We had to admit that the jet-black culprit was our
long-lost Nigger! We would have preferred to have expended the
compensation on producing milk.
A cow eats two tons of hay on ration diet during one winter. We had not
then cleared land to grow hay, and it cost forty dollars a ton landed.
For our hospitals and orphanages we used dried milks. But a dole even in
the form of milk was intolerable to an independent people if it could be
avoided.
That 'milk providence' of Alaska, the late Reverend Sheldon Jackson,
came to our aid in this dilemma with advice to repeat on our side his
own eminently successful experiment with reindeer. His Excellency the
Governor travelled the Coast with us yet another summer to 'obsairve'
and help us decide on the wisdom of our making such a venture. The
famous Kew Garden authorities identified our mosses and lichens, and
other summer and winter growths which we collected and sent them, as
'exactly right' for reindeer food.
North Newfoundland and Labrador have been the home of the woodland and
barren-land caribou for centuries. These animals are closely enough
allied to domestic reindeer to mate with them successfully. They do not
know the difference themselves. The Newfoundland woodland caribou is a
little larger than a reindeer, probably due to access to better food.
These animals (_Rangifer tarandus_) are very readily domesticated. They
mix with cattle, develop more affection than a horse, and infinitely
more than a cow. We tried it out with a fawn which we caught swimming in
a fjord, keeping it on the hospital ship with us. It became so friendly
that when I rowed ashore, it would jump overboard and swim after me; and
when I returned, swim back to the ship. When I walked around its paddock
ashore, it would follow close at my heels, and if I were outside the
wooden fence, would stand on its hind legs, and more than once hurt its
ankles trying to climb over after me.
These apparently gentle, timid animals have an amazing vitality. The
fact that they have contrived to exist in Newfoundland so long, with
very little practical protection against endless numbers of enemies,
especially the Bots-fly, and men armed with huge guns loaded with
buckshot, proves this. They have survived cold, scanty food, deep snow.
During the last thirty years the railways have brought innumerable
sportsmen armed with repeating rifles within a few miles of their
victims. I have seen huge piles of these wild caribou lying frozen in
heaps on the platforms of the Newfoundland wayside stations. So great
has been the slaughter that of late years all shooting of caribou has
had to be forbidden, in order to try to preserve the stock before it is
too late.
On the other hand, from a hillside I once watched one of our
driving-stags, which was tethered on the snow below and feeding.
Suddenly I noticed the largest of our husky dogs stealing towards him.
Fortunately, the stag did also and got ready in time. The big dog leaped
for the deer, which stood up on his hind legs and hit his adversary such
a straight blow from the shoulder as to send him flying head over heels,
so hurt and surprised that he did not take any further chances.
Reindeer are the most economical animals on earth to keep. There is no
need ever to build any shelter for them—they sleep comfortably in the
open all the year round. One does not have to feed them, as they can
obtain what they want far more easily than you can give it to them. They
cannot live on hay, anyhow; but in a few minutes, with their large,
splay feet, with the always sharp chitinous shell of their hoofs, they
can cut down through even hard frozen snow far more readily than I could
dig with a steel shovel. Once, when driving a deer all day, I took a
spade, thinking to help out my tired steed at night with his supper.
However, he not only dug down more quickly than I could, but he always
'struck oil' and I did not. What was more, he preferred to dig his own
fresh moss, for often we carried bags of moss on the sledge, as we
thought we could not allow him to spend the night digging and expect him
to haul the express all the next day.
Every part of a reindeer is valuable. Alive, he is good for transport.
The milk is rich and excellent for either butter or cheese. Incidentally
in our case, their trekking made pathways and cut ditches which helped
to drain the surface of the land, and they aided by their manure in
improving the pastures for our cattle. Also they formed a great source
of interest to visitors, who are an asset to any country. Dead, their
skins afford the best insulating covering known. The most northern
Eskimos prize them for clothing above all else. For sleeping in the
woods in winter on the snow, everyone who can possibly procure them uses
reindeer skins. The people can make chamois leather (of deerskin) for
moccasins or clothing, which is windproof, light in weight, and when
embroidered and tasselled as they use it, possesses a beauty complement
of very real value in an Arctic winter.
The meat is excellent for food. The stretched bowel makes a translucent
window-covering, or bags for preserving and carrying minced meat, like
sausages. The sinew of the back makes the most efficient thread
obtainable, and costs nothing when dried in the sun and stripped as
wanted for sewing purposes. When a water-tight seam is needed, such as
the covering of a canoe or a wading-boot, sinew swells as the tiny holes
made by sewing swell in water, so that not a weep of moisture will run
through and give one that fatal experience in cold—wet feet. The
tendons neither rot nor tear the skins.
As breeders, reindeer compare more than favourably with cattle for
regularity. Every spring from the second, and occasionally from the
first, year they will have one, and sometimes two fawns. Being
polygamous, a very few stags are necessary to serve a large herd; so
that there are plenty of superfluous famous George Kennan told me that
in Siberia he often purchased full-grown deer for fifty cents each, and
even as low as twenty-five cents, for dog food. The two thousand deer
being driven from Alaska to the Mackenzie River increased so largely in
the long two-year journey that over a thousand had to be sent back, and
even then more were delivered than had been contracted for.
The fecundity of deer may be a positive nuisance. The wild herds in
lands which man has stigmatized as 'barren lands' have reached millions.
The huge herds have taken a week to pass a given spot. The pictures
taken by J. B. Tyrrel and others show endless ranks of heavily horned
stags blotting out the horizon, like ancient hordes of
spearmen—suggesting the remark of the man who, after looking with open
mouth for some minutes at a giraffe, exclaimed, 'There ain't no such
beast.'
During the years we were running our herd we had no epidemic troubles
with the deer, except once when we lost a few in summer from a kind of
pneumonia which ceased directly we moved the herd to a new
feeding-ground.
Lastly, there is in the North unlimited pasture land with endless
fodder—all now being wasted. The indigenous caribou have been so
seriously depleted in our country that many natives have never even seen
one; but to-day these natives sometimes starve for lack of so attractive
and easily handled an animal, which can convert unused potential into
the direct service of mankind. The new science of animal genetics can
greatly multiply the value, size, and number of such animals by its
scientific methods.
We raised the money to purchase our herd of reindeer largely by the help
of the _Boston Transcript_ and a grant from the Agricultural Department
in Canada. That the Canadian Government has taken up the problem again
in the West and purchased a very large herd for the Mackenzie River
district shows their attitude to this effort at adaptation as a wise and
economic measure. On the advice of experts we bought our deer in
Lapland.
Our difficulties were, first of all, that the deer had to wait in
Lapland to haul to the landwash enough moss to last the three hundred of
them across the Atlantic. Snow was late in the fall of 1908, and without
the snow they could not haul. The steamer did not arrive, therefore, on
our side until the sea was frozen over, and the deer, instead of being
landed in Labrador as we had intended, had to be put ashore on the
frozen sea off North Newfoundland. Three Lapp families whom we had hired
to teach our people how to herd the deer came across with them. Though
many of the animals in landing on the ice off Crémaillière fell through
into the sea, they proved hardy and resourceful enough to reach the
land, where they gathered around the tinkling bells of the old deer
without a single loss from land to land.
One of our workers at St. Anthony that winter wrote that 'the most
exciting moment was when the Lapp woman was lowered in her own sledge
over the steamer's side on to the ice, drawn to the shore, and
transferred to one of our hospital _komatiks_, as she had hurt her leg
during the voyage. The sight of all the strange men about her frightened
her, but she was finally reassured, threw aside her coverings, and
clutched her frying-pan which she had hidden under a sheepskin. When she
had it safely in her arms, she allowed the men to lift her and put her
on the _komatik_.' When the doctor at the hospital advised that her leg
would be best treated by operation, her husband said, 'She is a pretty
old woman and doesn't need a good leg much longer.' She was thirty-five!
The herd throve splendidly, and multiplied regularly. By 1913 the
original three hundred brought out in 1908 had increased to fifteen
hundred, in spite of difficulties utterly unexpected, in spite of having
sent fifty to Canada and two lots of twelve to clubs, and some winters
of having killed one stag each fortnight for the hospital. The
management of the herd locally was in the capable hands of an Irish
major, a friend of mine who had had experience ranching in Mexico. He
came over specially and paid all his own expenses. We owe him much, for
even in winter he lived and camped with the herd.
Unfortunately, the Lapps did not like the country. They complained that
North Newfoundland was too cold. A rise in salary kept three of the men,
but when the third season they demanded even higher pay we decided,
wrongly, I fear, to let them go. The old herder warned me, 'No Lapps, no
deer'; but I trusted too much to the ability of locally trained men, and
was particularly worried at that time over Mission finances. The love of
the Lapps for the deer is like a fisherman's for his vessel—a ruling
passion. The Lapps always contended that the work was too hard, since
they had always to be away from camp, there being no wolves in the
country to keep the herd together and make them obey the warning summons
of the bells of the old does. They warned me again and again that we
must have a big fence or all the deer would go off into the country.
We had applied to the Newfoundland Government for protection and a grant
towards the expense of the reindeer experiment, since it was being
carried out solely and only for the welfare of their people, and the
far-sighted Canadian Government had subscribed already—but we could not
awaken interest at headquarters.
No sooner had the deer arrived than difficulties with the people began.
They are accustomed always to carry a gun for shooting birds or rabbits
for food. I had known only one deer killed on that great promontory of
North Newfoundland since I arrived on the Coast fifteen years
previously; but very soon we heard that 'Uncle Joe' had shot a caribou.
A visitor had offered to buy a good pair of antlers. Shortly a fisherman
brought in a fine head. He claimed that he had not even noticed that it
had one of our numbered tags through the cartilage of the ear.
We at once renewed our application to the Government for protection and
also asked for more herders, as we felt that if they had even a small
share in ownership they would be more interested. To our amazement the
Government contributed only the salary of one herder, but refused the
only protection which was of the least value. We had applied to run a
fence from the bottom of Pistolet Bay across ten miles to the bottom of
Hare Bay—a natural neck of land—and for a law prohibiting the killing
of any deer at all inside the enclosure. All that they would sanction
was that 'no _reindeer_ may be killed north of the line stated.' This
only made matters ten times worse, for if the deer either strayed or
were driven purposely just across the line (which they would not permit
us to fence), the killing of them was thus legalized.
The people knew that the deer had cost us fifty-one dollars each and
were as private property as our cows, which incidentally we had bought
for an even smaller sum. A petition, signed by a number of the 'voters'
of the district, went to St. John's to protest against the deer being
given protection. They petitioned to have the deer done away with, as
'they led so many into sin'; and some wiseacre added the clause, 'and
are a danger to our lives, for when our dog-teams get a scent of them
they run away with us.' This priceless document was returned to me by
the Government with a comment on the fact that it was the wish of the
free voters not to give us protection. Votes loom very large in the eyes
of the politicians in a free and sovereign state with a total population
not a quarter the size of a single modern city. As argument was useless,
we at once started a counter-petition in the district. This in turn was
signed by every one of the independent lawmakers who had signed the
_first_ document. However, as we were in bad odour at court because of
our having started cash co-operative stores to help the poor people, we
were left to fend as best we could.
Statistics show that we did not do badly. For our sins we had in summer
to cope with numbers of schoonermen, who constituted one of our most
difficult problems. Fawns were running with the does when the sea-ice
opened, and at the same moment these men from South Newfoundland came
sailing along the coast in hundreds, anchoring for the night in our
harbour, and going on north next morning. If I had been a youth on such
short rations as many of them were, and if, as they always did, I had
had the family blunderbuss on my shoulder in the hope of a sea-gull or a
duck, and suddenly saw a fat reindeer in a lonely corner looking me
guilelessly in the face, perhaps, as Paddy said, I should have found
that the one thing which I, too, could not resist was temptation.
Our only asset was that I was a magistrate. But when a man, too ignorant
to read, is brought before you and tells you that he never heard of a
reindeer and knew that the Government said it was lawful to kill caribou
there, or that he was bound north and might never be near us again, what
advantage was it to us to bother to entertain him all summer free in our
jail, quite possibly at our expense? Moreover, we found that every time
we put a local poacher in that miserable hut called by courtesy a jail,
his friends always made it harder and harder for our herders if ever the
roaming herd happened to leave them stranded some dirty night in the
vicinity of any of their homes. It was the old story of the servant when
he reigneth.
On one occasion there were five poachers together in our jail, and 'only
standing-room left.' When I hired a man to march around outside with a
loaded rifle, he found that he had enemies to guard against both inside
and out, and the task became obviously futile. All through the struggle
the Grenfell Association was spending a great deal of badly needed money
locally and giving endless relief in the neighbourhood. I had to be
owner, complainant, judge, and jailer all rolled into one.
One day the herders reported that the herding dogs, digging down through
the snow, had discovered the body of a freshly killed reindeer. The
animal had been shot by bullets from a twenty-two bore rifle, but there
were no other clues to the crime. Fortunately, that small bore is seldom
found on our Coast, most of our hunters still using a round bullet in
their old muzzle-loading shot-guns. So we at once despatched our
policeman to search every house in every village near, and to bring back
every twenty-two bore rifle he found. Shortly he returned with three. A
very expert Hudson's Bay Company factor was with me at the time, a man
who had been in their service in the wilds all his life. He carefully
examined the bullets, compared them with those of his own 'twenty-two'
which he used for shooting grouse, and assured me he could tell one
bullet from another. So we chopped off a good round of beef from the
frozen bullock in the storehouse, took a few witnesses and the local
policeman, and had bullets fired from all the rifles in succession into
it. The bullets were then extracted and kept separate. Suspicion rested
so strongly on one of the owners of the rifles that the guilty party
could scarcely have been any of the others. We therefore felt justified
in arresting him.
When the case came up, we called our Hudson's Bay Company friend and in
open court handed him the various bullets, all mixed up, we having
previously kept a control. Without any difficulty or hesitation whatever
he separated them again by the different marks which the rifling in the
barrels had made in the lead. On that evidence we convicted our man and
fined him the minimum, namely, two hundred dollars. To our surprise,
almost immediately, a cheque for the two hundred dollars came to us from
the well-paid keeper of the new Government lighthouse about thirty miles
distant, who happened to be the culprit's brother-in-law. The grim
humour was this time that the Government got the two hundred dollars,
the prisoner got his freedom, while we lost a deer and got nothing
whatever except the hard feeling of a number more of our neighbours.
As an offset to this unhappy memory there comes to my mind the memory of
another legal case. A policeman from the south one day brought into my
office a weird machine that had been manufactured for a still, and
trailing behind it a genial Irishman, who had a wife and eight children
and no other assets except a debt to myself and others. It was the depth
of winter. Paddy cheerfully owned up to moonshining.
[Illustration: A LABRADOR PRODUCT!]
[Illustration: ABE, MATE OF THE HOSPITAL BOAT]
'You have no food and no firewood home?'
'None, Your Honour.'
'If you go to jail your family will freeze as well as starve?'
'Yes, Your Honour.'
'Then don't plead guilty. When I say in court, "Paddy, are you guilty?"
you say, "Not guilty."'
He said it over several times. He went out of the room and came back in
and said it again. We thought matters were 'all set.'
There were few diversions in those days and the courthouse was crowded.
Paddy was the cynosure of all eyes and in the seventh heaven. To bring
him to earth, I explained that I was not a doctor, but a magistrate, and
to be very careful what he said, and to address me as a magistrate. Then
we began, the policeman jogging Paddy to stand at attention.
'Paddy, are you guilty or not guilty?'
'Guilty, Your Majesty!' and he looked around the court with supreme
self-satisfaction.
'Oh! You are, are you? Then the law says that for a first offence you
must pay to His Majesty the King one hundred dollars. You can have until
Saturday to get it, or else go to jail.'
On Saturday at noon, Paddy came over with a bag containing forty-eight
dollars.
'The King cannot take it,' I told him. 'He has to have a hundred, or you
have to go to jail. You can have one more hour to get it.'
Paddy lived in a Catholic village eight miles away. Our village was at
that time more than half Methodist, and the sects were only just
beginning to improve on the Jews and the Samaritans. With a very heavy
heart, I wended my way to the little courthouse. To my amazement, when
the court opened, in the face of the excited audience Paddy handed
across the table the bag, this time with one hundred dollars in it.
I discovered later that he had fallen in with a very soft-hearted young
fisherman who had been unable to resist the eight children, and had
literally emptied every penny he had into Paddy's bag. No one could
allow that, so, as on other occasions, I had to have a share in this
religious exercise. As I thought of it afterwards, Paddy got the fun and
the whiskey and we got the experience; but after all, as I went to bed,
it seemed to me that it was a more economic policy than having to assume
eight naked and hungry children in the middle of winter—for our
orphanage was 'chock-a-block.'
In 1914 the War began. Our reindeer herders preferred real war to petty
squabbles, utter lack of co-operation and ignorance on the part of the
very people the reindeer effort was designed to benefit. The two leading
herders had already gone with a herd of fifty deer, ironically enough,
to the Peace River district in Canada. The next year, having committed
the herd to the tender mercies of those 'who stayed by the stuff,' I
joined the Harvard Surgical Unit and went to France.
Two years later, when I visited that section of the Coast, only two
hundred and thirty of our fifteen hundred deer could be found. As a
result, we at once asked the Canadian Government to allow us to remove
them into their territory in order to try to save the sorry remnant.
Most generously they arranged to care for them. With our large schooner,
a number of volunteers, and the crew of my hospital steamer, we set out
to catch the deer.
None of us had ever used a lariat, but we built a large corral hidden by
woods and drove the deer into it. We somehow lassoed and carried lashed
on barrows to the beach about one hundred and forty deer. By that time
the excitement in the herd became so great that some of the larger stags
rushed headlong into the corral wall, and two broke their necks. A
breach was made in the stockade, however, and altogether forty deer
escaped. Thereupon we had to build a new corral, for nothing on earth
would bring the deer near the old one again. The new enclosure was on a
promontory. Success was just within our grasp when somehow the leading
stag scented danger and rushed down into the sea, all the other deer
following, exactly like the Gadarene swine. But far from breaking their
necks or being drowned, they swam gaily direct to another headland a
mile away, and long before we could get a boat and follow them, they had
landed 'safe on the other shore.' But, all told, we managed to get one
hundred and fifty.
We landed these at Rocky Bay in Canada, where the Canadian herders took
charge, subsequently removing them to Anticosti Island. There Mr.
Menier, who had purchased the island, let them run wild. Anticosti has
as large an area as Wales. Mr. Menier had literally turned out everyone
living on the island, paying their way to British Columbia and arranging
with the Canadian Government to give them a start there. The whole
island was a vast game preserve, centring around his palatial 'Halle de
Chasse.'
It was agreed that if ever we were able to restart reindeer herding in
Labrador, we were to have up to a thousand deer returned to us. The
island of Anticosti has since been resold and some lumbering operation
permitted there. The deer apparently did so well that they became too
numerous for the available food-supply. Many were reported to have
perished on that account, as did the elks in western Canada.
Just as we were removing our deer, we received too late promises of
protection for them from the Newfoundland Government if we would
continue the experiment. But we had proved our point—that the country
could support tens of thousands of deer on the spare and otherwise
useless spaces, and that the cost would be minimal, the land improved
and the return sure.
Of the forty deer which escaped on to the headland, we later saw but
one—and he was dead, with our lead tag in his ear. The rest had all
been poached before we returned the following season, and the interior
of North Newfoundland is once more a profitless waste.
CHAPTER XVI
ADRIFT ON A PAN OF ICE
ON Easter Sunday, the 21st of April 1908, it was still winter with us in
northern Newfoundland. Everything was covered with snow and ice. I was
returning to the hospital after morning service, when a boy came running
over with the news that a large team of dogs had come from sixty miles
to the southward to get a doctor to come at once on an urgent case. A
fortnight before we had operated on a young man for acute bone disease
of the thigh, but when he was sent home the people had allowed the wound
to close, and poisoned matter had accumulated. As it seemed probable
that we should have to remove the leg, there was no time to be lost, and
I therefore started immediately, the messengers following me with their
team.
My dogs were especially good ones and had pulled me out of many a
previous scrape by their sagacity and endurance. Moody, Watch, Spy, Doc,
Brin, Jerry, Sue, and Jack were as beautiful beasts as ever hauled a
_komatik_ over our Northern barrens. The messengers had been anxious
that their team should travel back with mine, for their animals were
slow at best, and moreover were now tired from their long journey. My
dogs, however, were so powerful that it was impossible to hold them
back, and though I twice managed to wait for the following sledge, I had
reached a village twenty miles to the south and had already fed my team
when the others caught up.
That night the wind came in from sea, bringing with it both fog and
rain, softening the snow and making the travelling very difficult.
Besides this a heavy sea began heaving into the bay on the shores of
which lay the little hamlet where I spent my first night. Our journey
the next day would be over forty miles, the first ten lying on an arm of
the sea.
In order not to be separated too long from my friends I sent them ahead
of me by two hours, appointing as a rendezvous the log tilt on the other
side of the bay. As I started the first rain of the year began to fall,
and I was obliged to keep on what we call the 'ballicaters,' or ice
barricades, for a much longer distance up the bay than I had
anticipated. The sea, rolling in during the previous night, had smashed
the ponderous layer of surface ice right up to the landwash. Between the
huge ice-pans were gaping chasms, while half a mile out all was clear
water.
Three miles from the shore is a small island situated in the middle of
the bay. This had preserved an ice bridge, so that by crossing a few
cracks I managed to get to it safely. From that point it was only four
miles to the opposite shore, a saving of several miles if one could make
it, instead of following the landwash round the bay. Although the ice
looked rough, it seemed good, though one could see that it had been
smashed up by the incoming sea and packed in tight again by the easterly
wind. Therefore, without giving the matter a second thought, I flung
myself on the _komatik_ and the dogs started for the rocky promontory
some four miles distant.
All went well till we were within about a quarter of a mile of our
objective point. Then the wind dropped suddenly, and I noticed
simultaneously that we were travelling over 'sish' ice. By stabbing down
with my whip-handle I could drive it through the thin coating of young
ice which had formed on the surface. 'Sish' ice is made up of tiny bits
formed by the pounding together of the large pans by the heavy seas. So
quickly had the wind veered and come offshore, and so rapidly did the
packed slob, relieved of the inward pressure of the easterly breeze,
'run abroad,' that already I could not see any pan larger than ten feet
square. The whole field of ice was loosening so rapidly that no retreat
was possible.
There was not a moment to lose. I dragged off my oilskins and threw
myself on my hands and knees beside the _komatik_ so as to give a larger
base to hold, shouting at the same time to my team to make a dash for
the shore. We had not gone twenty yards when the dogs scented danger and
hesitated, and the _komatik_ sank instantly into the soft slob. Thus the
dogs had to pull much harder, causing them to sink also.
It flashed across my mind that earlier in the year a man had been
drowned in this same way by his team tangling their traces around him in
the slob. I loosened my sheath-knife, scrambled forward and cut the
traces, retaining the leader's trace wound securely round my wrist.
As I was in the water I could not discern anything that would bear us
up, but I noticed that my leading dog was wallowing about near a piece
of snow, packed and frozen together like a huge snowball, some
twenty-five yards away. Upon this he had managed to scramble. He shook
the ice and water from his shaggy coat and turned around to look for me.
Perched up there out of the frigid water he seemed to think the
situation the most natural in the world, and the weird black marking of
his face made him appear to be grinning with satisfaction. The rest of
us were bogged like flies in treacle.
Gradually I succeeded in hauling myself along by the line which was
still attached to my wrist, and was nearly up to the snow-raft when the
leader turned adroitly round, slipped out of his harness, and once more
leered at me with his grinning face.
There seemed nothing to be done, and I was beginning to feel drowsy with
the cold when I noticed the trace of another dog near by. He had fallen
through close to the pan, and was now unable to force his way out. Along
his line I hauled myself, using him as a kind of bow anchor, and I soon
lay, with my dogs around me, on the little island of slob ice.
The piece of frozen snow on which we lay was so small that it was
evident we must all be drowned if we were forced to remain on it as it
was driven seaward into open water. Twenty yards away was a larger and
firmer pan floating in the sish, and if we could reach it I felt that we
might postpone for a time the death which seemed inescapable. To my
great satisfaction I now found that my hunting-knife was still tied on
to the back of one of the dogs, where I had attached it when we first
fell through. Soon the sealskin traces hanging on the dog's harnesses
were cut and spliced together to form one long line. I divided this and
fastened the ends to the backs of my two leaders, attaching the two
other ends to my own wrists. My long sealskin boots, reaching to my
hips, were full of ice and water, and I took them off and tied them
separately on the dogs' backs. I had already lost my coat, cap, gloves,
and overalls.
Nothing seemed to be able to induce the dogs to move, even though I kept
throwing them off the ice into the water. Perhaps it was only natural
that they should struggle back, for once in the water they could see no
other pan to which to swim. It flashed into my mind that my small black
spaniel, which was with me, was as light as a feather and could get
across with no difficulty. I showed him the direction and then flung a
bit of ice toward the desired goal. Without a second's hesitation he
made a dash and reached the pan safely, as the tough layer of sea ice
easily carried his weight. As he lay on the white surface looking like a
round black fuss-ball, my leaders could plainly see him. They now
understood what I wanted and fought their way bravely toward the little
'retriever,' carrying with them the line that gave me yet another chance
for my life. The other dogs followed them, and all but one succeeded in
getting out on the new haven of refuge.
Taking all the run that the length of my little pan would afford, I made
a dive, slithering along the surface as far as possible before I once
again fell through. This time I had taken the precaution to tie the
harnesses under the dogs' bellies so that they could not slip them off,
and after a long fight I was able to drag myself on to the new pan.
Though we had been working all the while toward the shore, the offshore
wind had driven us a hundred yards farther seaward. On closer
examination I found that the pan on which we were resting was not ice at
all, but snow-covered slob, frozen into a mass which would certainly
eventually break up in the heavy sea, which was momentarily increasing
as the ice drove offshore before the wind. The westerly wind kept on
rising—a bitter blast with us in winter, coming as it does over the
Gulf ice.
Some yards away I could still see my _komatik_ with my thermos bottle
and warm clothing on it, as well as matches and wood. In the memory of
the oldest inhabitant no one had ever been adrift on the ice in this
bay, and unless the team which had gone ahead should happen to come back
to look for me, there was not one chance in a thousand of my being seen.
To protect myself from freezing I now cut down my long boots as far as
the feet, and made a kind of jacket, which shielded my back from the
rising wind.
By midday I had passed the island to which I had crossed on the ice
bridge. The bridge was gone, so that if I did succeed in reaching that
island I should only be marooned there and die of starvation. Five miles
away to the north side of the bay the immense pans of Arctic ice were
surging to and fro in the ground seas and thundering against the cliffs.
No boat could have lived through such surf, even if I had been seen from
that quarter. Though it was hardly safe to move about on my little pan,
I saw that I must have the skins of some of my dogs, if I were to live
the night out without freezing. With some difficulty I now succeeded in
killing three of my dogs—and I envied those dead beasts whose troubles
were over so quickly. I questioned if, once I passed into the open sea,
it would not be better to use my trusty knife on myself than to die by
inches.
But the necessity for work saved me from undue philosophizing; and night
found me ten miles on my seaward voyage, with the three dogs skinned and
their fur wrapped round me as a coat. I also frayed a small piece of
rope into oakum and mixed it with the fat from the intestines of my
dogs. But, alas, I found that the matches in my box, which was always
chained to me, were soaked to a pulp and quite useless. Had I been able
to make a fire out there at sea, it would have looked so uncanny that I
felt sure that the fishermen friends, whose tiny light I could just
discern twinkling away in the bay, would see it. The carcasses of my
dogs I piled up to make a windbreak, and at intervals I took off my
clothes, wrung them out, swung them in the wind, and put on first one
and then the other inside, hoping that the heat of my body would thus
dry them. My feet gave me the most trouble, as the moccasins were so
easily soaked through in the snow. But I remembered the way in which the
Lapps who tended our reindeer carried grass with them, to use in their
boots in place of dry socks. As soon as I could sit down I began to
unravel the ropes from the dogs' harnesses, and although by this time my
fingers were more or less frozen, I managed to stuff the oakum into my
shoes.
Shortly before I had opened a box containing some old football clothes
which I had not seen for twenty years. I was wearing this costume at the
time; and though my cap, coat, and gloves were gone, as I stood there in
a pair of my old Oxford University running shorts, and red, yellow, and
black Richmond football stockings, and a flannel shirt, I remembered
involuntarily the little dying girl who asked to be dressed in her
Sunday frock so that she might arrive in heaven properly attired.
Forcing my biggest dog to lie down, I cuddled up close to him, drew the
improvised dogskin rug over me, and proceeded to go to sleep. One hand,
being against the dog, was warm, but the other was frozen, and about
midnight I woke up shivering enough, so I thought, to shatter my frail
pan to atoms. The moon was just rising, and the wind was steadily
driving me toward the open sea. Suddenly what seemed a miracle happened,
for the wind veered, then dropped away entirely, leaving it flat calm. I
turned over and fell asleep again. I was next awakened by the sudden and
persistent thought that I must have a flag, and accordingly set to work
to disarticulate the frozen legs of my dead dogs. Cold as it was I
determined to sacrifice my shirt to top this rude flag-pole as soon as
the daylight came. When the legs were at last tied together with bits of
old harness rope, they made the crookedest flag-staff that it has ever
been my lot to see. Though with the rising of the sun the frost came out
of the dogs' legs to some extent, and the friction of waving it made the
odd pole almost tie itself in knots, I could raise it three or four feet
above my head, which was very important.
Once or twice I thought that I could distinguish men against the distant
cliffs—for I had drifted out of the bay into the sea—but the objects
turned out to be trees. Once also I thought that I saw a boat appearing
and disappearing on the surface of the water, but it proved to be only a
small piece of ice bobbing up and down. The rocking of my cradle on the
waves had helped me to sleep, and I felt as well as I ever did in my
life.
I was confident that I could last another twenty-four hours if my boat
would only hold out and not rot under the sun's rays.
I could not help laughing at my position, standing hour after hour
waving my shirt at those barren and lonely cliffs; but I can honestly
say that from first to last not a single sensation of fear crossed my
mind.
My own faith in the mystery of immortality is so untroubled that it now
seemed almost natural to be passing to the portal of death from an
ice-pan. Quite unbidden, the words of the old hymn kept running through
my head:
My God, my Father, while I stray
Far from my home on life's rough way,
Oh, help me from my heart to say,
Thy will be done.
I had laid my wooden matches out to dry and was searching about on the
pan for a piece of transparent ice which I could use as a burning-glass.
I thought that I could make smoke enough to be seen from the land if
only I could get some sort of a light. All at once I seemed to see the
glitter of an oar, but I gave up the idea because I remembered that it
was not water which lay between me and the land, but slob ice, and even
if people had seen me, I did not imagine that they could force a boat
through. The next time that I went back to my flag-waving, however, the
glitter was very distinct, but my snow-glasses having been lost, I was
partially snow-blind and distrusted my vision. But at last, besides the
glide of an oar I made out the black streak of a boat's hull, and knew
that if the pan held out for another hour I should be all right. The
boat drew nearer and nearer, and I could make out my rescuers
frantically waving. When they got close by they shouted, 'Don't get
excited. Keep on the pan where you are.' They were far more excited than
I, and had they only known as I did the sensations of a bath in the icy
water, without the chance of drying one's self afterward, they would not
have expected me to wish to follow the example of the Apostle Peter.
As the first man leaped on my pan and grasped my hand not a word was
spoken, but I could see the emotions which he was trying to force back.
A swallow of the hot tea which had been thoughtfully sent out in a
bottle, the dogs hoisted on board, and we started for home, now forging
along in open water, now pushing the pans apart with the oars, and now
jumping out on the ice and hauling the boat over the pans.
It seems that the night before four men had been out on the headland
cutting up some seals which they had killed in the fall. As they were
leaving for home, my ice-raft must have drifted clear of Hare Island,
and one of them, with his keen fisherman's eyes, had detected something
unusual on the ice. They at once returned to their village, saying that
something living was adrift on the floe. The one man on that section of
coast who owned a good spy-glass jumped up from his supper on hearing
the news and hurried over to the look-out on the cliffs. Dusk though it
was, he saw that a man was out on the ice, and noticed him every now and
again waving his hands at the shore. He immediately surmised who it must
be; so little as I thought it, when night was closing in the men at the
village were trying to launch a boat. Miles of ice lay between them and
me, and the angry sea was hurling great blocks against the land. While I
had considered myself a laughing-stock, bowing with my flag at those
unresponsive cliffs, many eyes were watching me.
By daybreak a fine volunteer crew had been organized, and the boat, with
such a force behind it, would, I believe, have gone through anything.
After seeing the heavy breakers through which we were guided, as at last
we ran in at the harbour mouth, I knew well what the wives of that crew
had been thinking when they saw their loved ones depart on such an
errand.
Every soul in the village was waiting to shake hands as I landed; and
even with the grip that one after another gave me, I did not find out
that my hands were badly frostburnt—a fact which I have realized since,
however. I must have looked a weird object as I stepped ashore, tied up
in rags, stuffed out with oakum, and wrapped in the bloody dogskins.
The news had gone over to the hospital that I was lost, so I at once
started north for St. Anthony, though I must confess that I did not
greatly enjoy the trip, as I had to be hauled like a log, my feet being
so frozen that I could not walk. For a few days subsequently I had
painful reminders of the adventure in my frozen hands and feet, which
forced me to keep to my bed—an unwelcome and unusual interlude in my
way of life.
In our hallway stands a bronze tablet:
To the Memory of
Three Noble Dogs
MOODY
WATCH
SPY
Whose lives were given
For mine on the ice
April 21st, 1908
The boy whose life I was intent on saving was brought to the hospital a
day or so later in a boat, the ice having cleared off the coast
temporarily; and he was soon on the high-road to recovery.
We all love life, and I was glad to have a new lease of it before me. As
I went to sleep that night there still rang through my ears the same
verse of the old hymn which had been my companion on the ice-pan:
Oh, help me from my heart to say,
Thy will be done.
CHAPTER XVII
IN DOUBLE HARNESS
IN June 1909 I had finished another long lecture tour in England trying
to raise funds, while my colleagues had the hospitals and dog-driving on
the Coast. The time had come to sail westward again, and I was dreading
the ordeal of saying good-bye to my aged mother, perhaps for the last
time. I had begged her not to come again to Liverpool to see me off,
that I might avoid the long, slow parting as the ship left the dock, and
the loved form got ever smaller and less distinct till it disappeared.
New ideas are rare, but suddenly a brilliant one flashed across my mind,
in answer to my despondency. Why not take my mother with me to America?
True, she was seventy-eight years of age, had been born in India, and
had lived a very active and exacting life. I was to receive an M.A. from
Harvard, and an LL.D. from Williams College. It would make the occasions
ten times as enjoyable to myself to have her share them. She would be
far more thrilled than if she received degrees herself—and if—well,
she could sleep just as peacefully on one side of the Atlantic as on the
other; while I knew that the generous Americans would love to see her
and welcome one of the real saints of earth.
My earliest and most devoted volunteer worker was Miss Emma White, of
Boston. To-day, twenty-five years later, I can recall seeing her,
straight from her desk in the office of the Congregationalist Library,
entering St. Anthony, sitting on the bow of a schooner which we had
built in our mill, while written below was the legend of her own name,
in whose honour the ship was dedicated. Miss White is still at her seat
in the Library, but her soul is still in Labrador.
Her advice was sought and taken on the question of my mother's visit,
with the result that we sailed together on the _Mauretania_ for New
York. The Cunard Company gave my mother a lovely suite of rooms, with a
great four-poster brass bed, which, little though I knew it at the time,
was to serve me well in the most monumental adventure of my whole life.
The _Mauretania_ took four and a half days to reach New York. On the
second day out, a delightful Scotchman, with a burr as characteristic as
a bagpipe, introduced himself to me with his family. He had been born in
Stirling, and his name was Stir-r-ling, and he lived in Chicago. He
valued life, exactly as I did, for its glorious opportunities, and he
played shuffle-board (deck tennis not being invented), took afternoon
tea, and when we talked said worth-while things, having travelled much
and been 'educated' and not merely informed. One girl was a graduate of
Bryn Mawr University under the famous Miss M. Carey Thomas as President,
the best-known women's university in America. Her sister was as charming
as herself, and we hobnobbed naturally, for both were full of gaiety and
humour.
My own activities in life had engrossed my whole being so completely
that the idea of marriage had never entered my head. Now I am uncertain
as to whether we should or should not take a course in the philosophy of
it. My own experience says very decidedly 'No'; but after twenty-odd
years of married life I am not sure either whether this decision should
be made public by the husband or the wife. Anyhow, marriage came to me
'out of the blue'—the true blue itself—and a new, happier, and more
useful life began. A surgeon considers it justifiable to record end
results long before over twenty years have elapsed. Why not a layman?
Anyhow, the above is the most sober opinion of a mere husband and of one
who knows that no celibate has any right to speak on this subject.
These intervening years have been characterized in civilization by an
almost miraculous advance in human knowledge—also in divorces, failures
to enforce laws or commandments, and in the apotheosis of
self-expression. The relationship of one to the other of these or their
causes I must leave to my readers, asking them to remember that, from my
viewpoint, human knowledge, except that based on experience, can never
be a correct criterion of wisdom.
I am aware that there is no special virtue in keeping the Tenth
Commandment, not to envy your neighbours their happiness or their goods,
when one is fully occupied otherwise. As for special providences,
personally I never pray for a fair wind for my hospital steamer which
might mean a head wind for the schooners. Beyond asking for God's good
hand upon my unworthy self in everything, the marriage problem in
particular had never been a petition of mine for any special providence.
I still think, however, that it came more graciously as it did.
By the third day out, a fact that previously had never caused me any
worry got on my mind. I was on the 'grey-hound of the Atlantic,' and
those interested in the pool on the day's run had been completely
fooled, for the _Mauretania_ had set a new day's record of over six
hundred miles. The universal hustle of our American cousins had often
amused me. Yet here I was, becoming acutely conscious that I stood in
sore need of it myself. 'Ships that pass in the night,' with courses
presumably as different as the girl's and mine, might never meet again;
while the captain assured me in triumph at dinner that we should land in
two more days!
As for 'the girl in black,' I knew neither whence she came nor whither
she was going, nor why she was in black. Indeed, all I did know was that
she was down on the passenger list, and also with the dining-saloon
steward, as 'Mr. Stirling and family.' An old school friend on board at
that time, manager of Lord Northcliffe's great pulp interests on our
Coast (Sir Mayson Beeton), jokingly quizzed me when I was late for an
appointment one night, as to how I came to be walking round with 'the
girl in black,' the handsomest girl on the ship, and what her name was.
I wondered why he asked me. But as a matter of fact both of these were
questions which, according to Hoyle, are considered taboo at certain
times. So we let the name go as 'the girl in black.'
As to her name, had I had any doubt, although I am not considered to be
lacking in courage usually, I am certain that at that particular time I
should not have dared to ask Mrs. Stirling. Necessity has no respect
even for a coward heart, and I realized that twenty-six knots an hour
demanded action. To take the more venturesome of two paths has always
been an axiom with me, and I remembered what that splendid old patriot,
Nehemiah, put on record. When the Persian tyrant noticed that his mind
was low, and asked him if he wanted anything, he knew that to make a
petition displeasing to the King involved immediate death. He records,
'I prayed to God, and I said to the King, may it please...,' all in the
same breath. Well, I did the same thing, and in return received the real
shock of my life. 'But you do not even know my name!' The name of a
Labrador reef does not matter. You have only to avoid it, anyhow, and it
probably has a dozen, for conferring names is a favourite pastime of
explorers. But now on that account I seemed to be in real danger of
shipwreck. Even a perversion of truth could not help me, convenient as
that may be in time of trouble, for I knew I could not stand
catechizing. Labrador seafaring habits, however, came to my rescue, for
they had accustomed me, on the spur of the moment, to act first and
think after. 'That is not the issue,' I answered. 'The only thing that
interests me is what it is going to be.'
Years later, 'the girl in black' told me that once at Bryn Mawr she was
invited to come and hear a medical missionary talk about Labrador, and
that she had refused in no unmeasured terms. I thought at the time there
at least was possibly another reason for my faith in providence in small
things.
I have known even Britons who are not at their best on the rolling wave,
but such genius as our family has displayed has, so history assures us,
shone best on a quarter-deck, and on this occasion it pleased God to add
another naval victory to our annals. Perhaps no previous suitor had
tried to carry her by assault. Perhaps Nelson's greatest victory was
when he put his telescope to his blind eye, ignored all suggestions to
the contrary, and just went for the enemy, as at Copenhagen. That has
been the family way, anyhow.
The generosity of my friends, considering the mental abnormality that
characterizes this not uncommon experience of life, will condone in me a
wicked satisfaction that my lack of appreciation of the blessing of a
rapid voyage was paralleled by the joy that my mother preferred that
blessed brass four-post bed to even a chair on the promenade deck. When,
just before landing, I told her that I had asked a fellow-passenger to
become my wife, I am certain, had the opportunity offered at the moment,
she would have tumbled down the _Mauretania's_ grand staircase again as
she had once done when bidding me good-bye at the pier in Liverpool. But
that invaluable four-poster proved a stabilizer, and, though her
equanimity was plainly upset, it only showed itself in an unaccustomed
tear rolling down her cheek—one of the tears I cost her that at least
brings me no regrets.
[Illustration: NORTH-WEST RIVER HOSPITAL]
[Illustration: BATTLE HARBOUR]
When the girl's way and mine parted in that last word in material
_mêlées_, the customs-house shed in Manhattan after the arrival of a big
liner, I realized that in reality an armistice only rather than a
permanent settlement had been achieved. True, there was no stern father
in the case, but there was a mother and a home, both in Chicago and at
Lake Forest. These loomed up as formidable strongholds for a homeless
wanderer to assault, especially as I had no alternative to keeping a
whole series of appointments essential to my work among the fishermen
and just postponing the 'campaign on the western front' until later.
Moreover, the fact that there was neither brother nor sister, niece nor
nephew, to fill the void, if I carried off 'the girl in black' to the
other end of the continent, was a very serious consideration. But the
inexorable schedule that kept me in the East, and the generous
hospitality of friends that meant so much to my mother, afforded the
blessing that work always carries with it—an occupied mind, though the
greatest of all ventures loomed up as more and more momentous as the
fateful day drew near for me to turn my face westwards.
This visit to my wife's beautiful country home among the trees on the
bluff of Lake Michigan in Lake Forest was one long dream. My mother and
I were now made acquainted with the family and friends of my fiancée.
Her father, Colonel MacClanahan, a man of six feet five inches in
height, had been Judge Advocate General on the staff of Braxton Bragg,
and had fought under General Robert E. Lee. He was a Southerner of
Scotch extraction, having been born at Nashville and brought up there in
Tennessee. A lawyer by training, after the war, when everything that
belonged to him was destroyed in the Reconstruction Period, and being
still a very young man, he had gone north to Chicago and begun life
again at his profession and eventually become head of the bar. There he
had met and married, in 1884, Miss Rosamond Hill, daughter of Judge
Frederick Torrance Hill, of Burlington, Vermont, but who, since
childhood and the death of her parents, had lived with her married
sister, Mrs. Charles Durand, of Chicago. The MacClanahans had two
children—the boy, Kinloch, dying at an early age from tuberculosis of
the hip joint. Colonel MacClanahan himself died a few months later,
leaving a widow and one child, Anne Elizabeth Caldwell MacClanahan. She
and her mother lived the greater part of the time with her mother's
sister, but she, alas, had also passed away a year before.
The friends with whom my fiancée had been travelling were next-door
neighbours in Lake Forest. They made my short stay doubly happy by
countless kindnesses; and all through the years Mr. Stirling gave me not
only a friendship which meant more to me than I can express, but he also
came to Labrador to study our problems and gave his loving and
invaluable aid and counsel in our work, as well as endless help, until
he too crossed the divide in 1918.
At Lake Forest, in spite of my many years of sailor life, I found that I
was expected to acquit myself in many activities I had left long ago to
landlubbers—among other things, to ride a horse, my fiancée being
devoted to that means of progression. The days when I had ridden to
hounds in England as a boy in Cheshire stood me in some little stead,
for, like swimming, tennis, and other pastimes calling for
co-ordination, riding is never quite forgotten. But remembering Mr.
Winkle's experiences, it was not without some misgivings that I found a
shellback like myself galloping behind my lady's charger.
My last essay at horseback riding had been just eleven years previously
in Iceland. Having to wait a few days at Reikyavik, I had hired a whole
bevy of ponies with a guide to take myself and the young skipper of our
vessel for a three days' ride to see the geysers. He had never been on
the back of any animal before, but was not surprised or daunted at
falling off frequently, though an interlude of being dragged along with
one foot in the stirrup over lava beds made no little impression upon
him. Fodder of all kinds is very scarce in the volcanic tufa of which
all that land consists, and any moment that one stopped was always
devoted by our ponies to grubbing for blades of grass in the holes. On
our return to the ship, the crew could not help noticing that the
skipper for many days ceased to patronize the lockers or any other seat,
and soon they were rejoicing that for some reason he was unable to sit
down at all. He explained it by saying that his ponies ate so much lava
that it stuck out under their skins; and I myself recall feeling
inclined to agree with him.
The experiences of those days in Lake Forest live in that part of one's
mind that surely does not have to be replaced every seven years.
Something somewhere in the human make-up does not get destroyed this
side of the grave, whether memory is a window through which spirit
communicates with body, or whether it is a library, proof against every
kind of oxidizing process, slow like that always going on, or fast like
that by fire, I do not know.
Achievement or failure, not doles or accidents, have always loomed up in
my experience as the dominant events in my life. I thank God for this
terrestrial achievement. A ring had sealed the fact of success. But 'the
girl in black' has just looked over my shoulder and says, 'No, I can't
let you put that down to your land accomplishments. Let's call it
another Grenfell naval engagement.'
Our wedding had been scheduled for November, and for the first time I
had found a Labrador summer long. In the late fall I left for Chicago on
a mission that had no flavour of the North Pole about it. We were
married in Grace Episcopal Church, Chicago, on November 18, 1909. Our
wedding was followed by a visit to the Hot Springs of Virginia; and
then, heigh-ho, and a flight for the North. We sailed from St. John's,
Newfoundland, in January. I had assured my wife, who is an excellent
sailor, that she would scarcely notice the motion of the ship on the
coastal trip of three hundred miles. Instead of five days, it took nine;
and we steamed straight out of the Narrows at St. John's into a head
gale and a blizzard of snow. The driving spray froze on to everything,
till the ship was appropriately sugared like a vast Christmas
cake—another providence. It made the home which we had built at St.
Anthony appear perfectly delightful. My wife had had her furniture sent
north during the summer, so that now the Lares and Penates with which
she had been familiar from childhood seemed to extend a mute but hearty
welcome to us from their new setting.
We have three children, all born at St. Anthony. Our elder son, Wilfred
Thomason, was born in the fall of 1910; Kinloch Pascoe in the fall of
1912, two years almost to a day behind his brother; and lastly a
daughter, Rosamond Loveday, who followed her brothers in 1917. In the
case of the two latter children the honours of the name were divided
between both sides of the family, Kinloch and Rosamond being old family
names on my wife's side, while, on the other hand, there have been
Pascoe and Loveday Grenfells from time immemorial.
Only an insane man could expect one personality to possess all the
talents valuable for perfect work. Nor can two possess them. Our
experience, however, is rather Einsteinian than Newtonian. Twice one has
been more than two in personality. Looking back on twenty-four years,
marriage has been a geometric rather than an arithmetic factor in my
records.
'The girl in black' was a born organizer. Her Scotch ancestry and her
college career together certified that. Organization needs, besides
patience and expenditure of energy, a peculiar vision, not specially
granted to the seafaring mind. Order has a new quartering on our shield.
In old days my best friends often felt like holding back help because
they feared the work could not 'carry on' without the founder. There is
little doubt of that now. Each department—and how many new ones there
are!—runs by itself. 'What every woman knows' is literally true in
every normal Scotch married life. More than once, I've heard 'the girl
in black' called 'Maggie.' Nothing in these days of depression has
helped us more than the orderliness of the ramifications of this work
and its many scattered little offices, and the fact that so many
important posts are held by volunteers. I used to feel that all my
responsibility to the public for their help was ended if we did the work
to the best of our power and as economically as we could. I had to learn
that was far from enough, and 'the girl in black' has shielded me by her
highly trained business capacities from many troubles. An autobiography
is a book of confessions. Our work would not have been where it is
to-day without 'the girl in black.'
By bringing into co-operation the personal service of so many of her
highly trained friends, the Child Welfare Department and the Educational
Fund, the management of which has been one of her special interests,
came into being. It was good to educate the children who had no others
to guide or provide for them. It was an imperfect service not to equip
them with the mechanical training that would fit them to avail
themselves of the opportunities of their country and enable us to expand
our work.
Every autumn 'the girl in black,' besides her own family, mothered a
batch of boys and girls from Labrador to institutions from Truro
Agricultural College, Nova Scotia, to Berea in Kentucky, including Pratt
Institute, New York; Wentworth Institute, Boston; Rochester Athenaeum;
Upper Canada College, Toronto, and to business and technical schools
wherever she could personally secure the necessary opportunity.
Everything, from an outfit, a route, a ticket, and a personal guide, had
to be arranged. I have a photograph of her on a truck with sixteen
students who had just reached Sydney, in Cape Breton, 'for
distribution.'
Her determination to keep open house on the Coast, and how through the
years she has been able to add that to her contributions, I must leave
to 'wops' and workers and visitors and people. I counted fifty-eight at
the alfresco supper after the usual Sunday evening 'Sing' on one
occasion, and twenty fishermen to a sit-down dinner in the sun porch at
another, and I thanked God.
In the keeping in touch with friends and helpers, in her courage and
vision in discovering new ways of earning instead of begging help for
different activities in turn, has lain, however, her most unique
contribution; for even in a thankless task like raising money to keep
our work going, she prefers any honest labour to the dole, and has shown
that many love to give work who could not possibly give money. I venture
to suggest that not a few of the most successful of her efforts have
been new features in the missionary world.
Everyone uses a calendar. Millions are sold. Why should not a Mission
make a better one than anyone else? The conception and the venture on
twenty thousand, so as to cut the production cost to a minimum, were due
to 'the girl in black.' The artist of King George's Christmas card did
the original painting. Raphael Tuck, internationally famous for art
reproduction, did the technical work. But the vision, the venture, the
hardest work of marketing, and the amazing result of eight thousand
dollars to the funds were due entirely to 'the girl in black.'
Thirty-five hundred unsold copies remained. The covers were removed,
framed, and sold as souvenirs both on the Coast and at home. The
fifty-two photographs of Labrador were divided between souvenir picture
albums and covers for charming boxes of candies, and the publicity and
profit from these are still being returned to Labrador.
A congestion of industrial goods made some new method of marketing them
imperative. We knew they were what the public wanted, and that they were
worth the cost. A new idea came to the rescue. Why not secure a truck,
get volunteers to drive it, and arrange summer sales at holiday resorts
in the foyers of hotels? It all sounds so easy now. But there were a
thousand difficulties at first, and the amount of writing and personal
interviewing, and the preliminary outlay, which was large, all needed
hard work, business acumen, and vision, and the peculiar courage of
naturalness. Perfectly splendid girl volunteers rallied round, sales
were organized from Florida to Maine. New power was given to the workers
in Labrador to give out more labour and to many more children and poor
women the gospel of the love of God was preached in actual loaves and
fishes. But the _fons et origo_ was once more 'the girl in black.'
Again hers was the launching of Dog-Team Tavern, twenty miles south of
Burlington, on a Vermont highway, to be furnished free, to be run by
volunteers, who cleared its unavoidable overhead expenses by selling
teas to tourists and washing up dirty crockery for the love of God, in
order to help market products of industrial work made by far-off
fishermen. This venture shows the same faith exactly that brought the
same results, and in the same ways, that Paul speaks of in the Epistle
to the Hebrews, and that many a Christian never believes could be
accomplished outside the Bible. Such things are not looked for to-day.
Yet this whole effort also has materialized exactly as it was dreamed in
the heart and mind of 'the girl in black,' who has mothered it like many
another from the first. Those who have so nobly served in it longest are
the first to realize this, that the fact that many visitors have come
all the way from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and from farther to
visit it, suggests its success, and raises hopes of a similar work in
winter in cities, and perhaps on other highways, and in the service of
other good causes as well as ours, in the days to come. The Dog-Team
Tavern is advertised by pointers over one hundred miles of road.
Volunteers produced them and put them up. Think of Jonathan Edwards
considering a volunteer Scotch girl, and another from Texas, and another
from Bryn Mawr, driving an old borrowed car around New England and
nailing up pictures of dog-teams on posts, as being 'preachers of the
Gospel.' Anyway, we do.
Our telephone this afternoon announced: 'Your head worker is in the
hospital here. Her car skidded and turned over twice.' Lady Grenfell
telephoned three hours later: 'L—— is back at the Dog-Team Tavern
again. She crawled out of the window after the car made two somersaults,
got forty men to turn the car right side up, and she has limped back to
the Tavern in it, with only a cut and a bruise or two.'
Even as this book was going to press, there were two new ventures on the
_tapis_ to help us carry on in these days, difficult for all the world,
but especially so for a population like ours, small, isolated, and, even
before the depression, living often close to the hunger-line. This time
it was puzzles, made specially for us by Raphael Tuck, of London, and
'containing two hundred pieces of the polar regions, to help build up
the work in Labrador,' and a bazaar, undertaken at the suggestion of
Miss Phillips, of the Animal Rescue League. With her help and that of
other generous friends, this fair was held in Boston in November 1932.
Both these efforts called for courage and for untold work, but knowing
'the girl in black,' I had faith to believe that she and her colleagues
would put them through.
What do I think of marriage? What do I think of my digestion? I consider
it a pathological symptom to think of either. The title of this chapter
best describes my experience.
I once watched a large camel and a tiny cow harnessed together in Egypt,
and doing excellent work with a plough. I feel like the smaller partner,
grateful for redoubled capacity. In every way marriage is as natural as
any other condition of life on earth. Like Labrador, the 'early
explorers' said, 'It is of no use to man.' We think, however, that it
was they who were no use.
No thinker can believe for a moment that the worth-whileness of life is
what we get out of it. No one who enters life, or school, or club, or
country, or marriage, possessed of that spirit will find any human
institution a success. Mere physical beauty certainly does not ensure
permanency of love. It cannot. It does not last. Yet marriage has made
it last. Look at Darby and Joan—hand in hand at the eventide of life,
facing together the last experience of us all with the same smile with
which they faced the first. Is that a failure? An inevitable cause of
failure of all human ideals is selfishness. Call it sin if you wish: I
am no stickler for labels. Whatever you style it, 'self first' is the
negation of the _raison d'être_ of our being on earth at all. It and
lasting happiness, married or unmarried, are as incompatible as alkalis
and acids, or perhaps better, as fire and gunpowder.
Like business, sport, ventures of all and every kind, marriage to be a
success must be entered with a will to succeed, as must faith in man and
even in God. The incidents of a day must be looked at in due
perspective, not as to their little reaction on myself, whether it is
_my_ ease, _my_ stomach, or _my_ dignity, but the effect on the other
half—the team. Only one selfish player in the best team on earth can
lose the game if he 'hogs the ball' when he should pass it to give
another player the glory of the touch-down.
We two, anyhow, are signing this chapter together. When we began, we
believed marriage to be a part of God's plan for men's and women's
happiness on earth, enabling them to help the world just so much more,
since union means more strength and wisdom and courage. Now that we are
on the last lap and the final goal seems not so far away, we are holding
hands closer than ever, confident that the final experience of life also
will be easier to face thus, and indeed become only another joyous
venture, when these worn-out bodily machines of ours shall be discarded,
and on the other side we shall work again, in new fields, together.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SIGHT OF SALT WATER UNBOUNDED
IN April 1912 a large meeting was held in New York to reorganize the
management of our work. The English Royal National Mission to Deep Sea
Fishermen was no longer able or willing to finance, much less to direct,
affairs which had gone beyond their control, and we felt it imperative
to arrange an organization of an international character to which all
the affairs of the enterprise could be turned over. The International
Grenfell Association was incorporated at that time. It consists to-day
of a Board of Directors representing the Grenfell Association of
America, the Grenfell Association of Great Britain and Ireland, the New
England Grenfell Association, the Grenfell-Labrador Medical Mission, and
the Grenfell Association of Newfoundland. Each one of these component
societies has two members on the central Council. These directors have
ever since been giving most generously of their time, their money, and
their interest to the wise and efficient administration of our work. To
these unselfish men and women Labrador and North Newfoundland, as well
as I, owe a greater debt than can ever be repaid.
That winter had been a most busy time for us. The New Year found us in
Florida and thence we journeyed to Colorado and the Pacific Coast, where
at Santa Barbara a special meeting had been arranged by our good friend
Dr. Andrews, who every summer for eighteen years travelled all the way
from his home there to St. Anthony at his own expense to afford our
fishermen the inestimable benefits of his skill as an eye specialist.
Many years ago, the following note came to me from an eager would-be
patient: 'Dear Dokker Gransfield. When be the eye spider coming to St.
Anthony? I needs to see him bad.' Six weeks of lecturing nearly every
night in a new town in Canada on our way East gave me a real vision of
Canadian life and an admiration for its people, who are making a nation
of which the world is proud.
It would appear that I possessed an insatiable love of lecturing.
Nothing is farther from the truth. But the brevity of life is an
insistent fact of our existence, and the inability to do good work on
the Labrador for the lack of that help which is gladly given if only one
will take the trouble to show the reasonableness of the expenditure,
makes one feel guilty if an evening is spent quietly. Lecturing is
without question the most uncongenial and least romantic task I have
been called upon to do; but in a work like ours, which we are thankful
to feel has shown a steady growth through these past forty years, and
which is not under any special church, funds must be raised largely
through voluntary subscriptions.
For the first seven years of my work I never spent the winters in the
country—nor was it my intention ever to do so. Besides the general
direction of all the branches of our activities my special task as
superintendent has been, and must doubtless remain, the raising of the
budget, just as my particular charge on the Coast itself is the hospital
steamer _Strathcona_. Owing to our frozen sea, it is only possible to
operate the ship in summer—and only necessary then, as the fishing
fleets are only on the Labrador during the months of open water. The
actual work and the life in the North are an indescribable rest to both
my wife and myself after the nervous and physical drain of a lecture
tour. One used to wonder at the lack of imagination in those who would
greet us, after long, wearisome hours on the train or in a crowded
lecture hall, with 'What a lovely holiday you are having!' We have
learned to regard this oft-repeated comment only with amusement.
A lecture tour does include some of the pleasantest experiences of life,
bringing one into contact with many people whom it is a privilege to
know. But eternal vigilance is the price of avoiding a breakdown. One's
memory is taxed far beyond its capacity. To forget some things and some
people and some kindnesses are unforgivable sins. A new host every
night, a new home, a new city, a new audience, lead one into lamentable
lapses. A man in the train once asked me how I liked Toledo. I replied
that I had never been there. 'Strange,' he murmured, 'because you spent
two days in my house!' On another occasion at a crowded reception I was
talking to a lady on one side and a gentleman on the other. I had caught
neither name. They did not address each other, and I felt I must remedy
matters by making them acquainted, and mumbled, 'Please let me present
you to Mrs. M-m-m.' 'Oh! don't trouble,' he responded. 'We've been
married for thirty years.'
We had just completed a lecture tour in behalf of Labrador in Scotland.
My train was already blowing off steam in the station, and I had heard
the guard shout 'All aboard' and the sound of snapping doors. I could
see my wife frantically waving to me from a carriage far down the
platform, and was putting my best foot forward to make a 'getaway,' when
some obstructionist at the wicket-gate held his hand out across my
pathway. Shaking hands had become epidemic with me. I grasped it
hastily, shook it heartily, and continued my flight. A strong feeling
that I must have been recognized flashed over me, for I had become an
unusual centre of attraction. Even my ardent friend from the gate was
pursuing me, apparently with a determination of pressing even more
parting attentions upon me. I was not mistaken. He was the ticket
collector!
It is my invariable custom in the North to carry a water-tight box with
matches and a compass chained to my belt.
One night I had turned into bed in a very large, strange room without
noting the bearings of the doors or electric switches. My faithful belt
had been abandoned for pyjama strings. It so happened that to catch a
train I had to rise before daylight and all my possessions were in the
dressing-room. I soon gave up hunting for the electric light. It was
somewhere in the air, I knew, but beating the air in the dark with the
windows wide open in winter is no better fun in your night-clothes in
New York than in Labrador. A tour of inspection revealed no less than
five doors, none of which I felt entitled to enter in the dark in
deshabille.
An independent life has left me with a dislike of asking strangers the
way to any place I am seeking. The aversion is more or less justified by
the fact that outside the police force only very exceptional persons can
direct you, especially if they know the way themselves. On my first
visit to New York I could see how easy a city it was to navigate, and
returned to my host's house in Washington Square in good time to dress
for dinner after a long side trip near Columbia University and Bellevue
Hospital. 'How did you find your way?' my friend asked. 'Why, there was
just enough sky visible to let me see the North Star,' I answered. I
felt almost hurt when he laughed. It is natural for a polar bear not to
have to enquire the way home.
Perhaps the greatest danger of a lecture tour is the reporter,
especially the emotional one, who has not attended your lecture. I owe
such debts to the Press that this statement seems the blackest of
ingratitude. My controversy with this class of reporters is that they
are too generous, and put into one's mouth statements which on final
analysis may be cold facts, but which, remembering that one is lecturing
on a work among people whom one loves and respects, it would never occur
to me to slur at a public meeting. No one who tries to alter conditions
which exist can expect to escape making enemies. I have seen reports of
what I have said at advertised meetings which were cancelled
subsequently. I have followed up rumours and editors have expressed
sorrow that they have accepted them from men who had been too busy to be
present. But _qui s'excuse s'accuse_, and my conclusion is that the
lecturer is practically helpless.
For many years after our marriage my wife most generously acted as my
secretary, having especially learned typing and shorthand in order to
free me from that burden, and for the last twenty-four years, the span
of our married life so far, has helped me enormously on this line. But
lecture tours are the despair of us both. One cannot keep abreast of
one's correspondence.
It was just after the first of June 1912 when again we found ourselves
heading north for St. Anthony, only once more to be caught in the jaws
of winter. For heavy Arctic ice blockaded the whole of the eastern
French Shore, and we had to be content to be held up in small ice-bound
harbours till strong westerly, offshore winds cleared the way. Having
looked into matters at St. Anthony, we immediately turned our faces
southward again to inspect the new venture of the Institute.
For a long time we had felt the need of some place in St. John's where
work for fishermen could be carried on, and which could be also utilized
as a place of safety for girls coming to that city from other parts of
the island. My attention was called one day to the fact that liquor was
being sent to people in the outports C.O.D. by a barrel of flour which
was being lowered over the side of the mail steamer rather too quickly
on to the ice. As the hard bump came, the flour in the barrel jingled
loudly and rum leaked profusely from the compound fracture.
The _Strathcona_ was at work one day in a harbour in the Straits of
Belle Isle, and around us were a number of large Banking vessels from
the New England coast, each with a crew of twenty to twenty-five men.
When I returned home, I found the skipper of one of them awaiting me on
deck. He was considerably excited. It seemed that on the way north the
crew had taken his vessel into St. Pierre for stores, and then, taking
French leave, had loaded the vessel up with intoxicants. At the moment
they were all out in their dories, and so he urged me to search the
vessel at once. His reason was that the crew were so dangerous when
drunk, and he was unable to do anything, since they were so violent and
outnumbered him twenty to one. We rowed aboard a little later, and found
things exactly as he had said, and seizing the opportunity cleaned the
whole lot out, loaded it on to the _Strathcona_, and steamed away to our
next port of call. Not till two years later did I meet that skipper
again, and he laughingly reminded me of the trick he had played on his
crew.
'I hope it helped you out and enabled you to get a good voyage,' I said,
thinking of the men's families.
'Yes, sir. It helped me out all right. When the men got back, they were
furious. They picked up the dories and the anchor, and sailed all the
way back to St. Pierre and got another load. Moreover, they almost
helped me out of a job when they told the owners.'
On a previous occasion I had dumped a seizure of liquor over the side,
and had been warned that such an action laid even a Mission steamer
under suspicion. The smell of it led more than one reformer to suspect
our ship before we got rid of it in St. John's, and the twinkle in the
eye of the officer into whose boat we delivered it made us fear that
King George never saw any of it after all our trouble.
On two previous occasions, before the Government had asked me to act as
unpaid Justice of the Peace, serious cases arose, which we had to deal
with for lack of any other authority present. The first was when we
found the dead bodies of three young women lying side by side on the
floor of an empty hut. Suspicion was somewhat disarmed by one man, left
to watch, seeing an Eskimo half-breed come rowing to the house with some
lumber he had been away in the forest to saw for their coffins. He could
only say that they died after drinking tea, made from the leaves of a
plant near by, for lack of the genuine article. The plant was hemlock.
The women died with the identical symptoms described by Socrates. This
man was sent for trial to St. John's. He returned years later,
complaining that he had been turned out of a comfortable lodging, where
he was fed and clad, and even given tobacco, and that with no work to
do.
The second was a worse case, because the criminal admitted the guilt
when there was no way to escape, and accepted a purely amateur sentence.
This, as we both regarded it years afterward, was unquestionably a very
severe one. It had, however, atoned in part to the victim in the only
way possible.
In St. John's there was no 'Foyer des Pêcheurs,' and no one wanted
fishermen straight from a fishing schooner either in his home or beside
him in church. As one man said, 'It is easy for the parson to tell us to
be good, but it is hard on a wet, cold night to be good in the open
street.' It is harder still 'to be good' if you have to find shelter in
a brightly lighted room of a saloon, where music is being played. The
boarding-houses for the fishermen, where thousands of our young men
flocked in the spring to try for a berth in the seal fishery, were
nothing short of calamitous. Finally, unsophisticated girls coming from
the outports to the city ran terrible risks, having no friends to direct
and assist them. The Institute which we had in mind was to include a
department for girls as well. No provision was made in the city for the
accommodation of wrecked crews.
My personal attitude toward alcohol is known to my friends—and to my
enemies. A man does not need alcohol and is far better without it. A man
who sees two lights when there is only one is not wanted at the wheel of
my vessel or of my motor car. It is true that in many countries the rich
can flout the laws which they do not like, until, as with the
prohibition law in America, they can force the people to believe that
they cannot carry out any law which the wealthy choose to pay to break.
There is a far more serious element in the loss of confidence that is
even now shaking America than those who are keeping boot-leggers admit.
More than once I have been at dinners where nearly everyone at the table
boasted that he regularly broke the law. I recall one cocktail episode
in particular. A lady had chaffed me for not drinking intoxicants even
in a prohibition country, in reply to my query as to why she herself
indulged in them. From her general contour, no urgent reason for her
doing so presented itself to my medical eye. She replied, 'Because I
like them.' Noticing a triple string of priceless pearls around her
neck, I was surprised into the retort, 'I would greatly like the pearls
which you are wearing, madam, but fortunately for you I have a
conscience. It would not be easy if I took them.'
The English and Scotch papers are ridiculing the 'awful failure' of this
law of the land, and lamenting at the same time that their liquor-making
men are out of work. To the unprejudiced reader this sounds a trifle
incongruous. They add that the 'wet plank' has, however, caused immense
quantities of hard liquor to be hoarded in warehouses, ready to ship
across at the first moment. Shares, even in distilleries, have gone up.
For these philanthropists hope that the terrible results of prohibition
will need immediate solace, by being drowned in whiskey.
But to return to the problem of a Seamen's Institute. As vested
interests would be arrayed against us as prohibitionists, it was
obviously futile to put up a second-rate affair in a back street. I had
almost forgotten to mention that the capital boasted already an old
Seamen's Home, but it had gradually become a roost for boozers, so when
we, as trustees, made an inspection of it, we decided on immediate
closure. After a few years of collecting funds for our Institute, our
friends, some of them, developed 'cold feet,' and, moreover, reports
were circulated by ill-wishers that the whole thing was a piece of
personal vanity and not in the least needed. So the matter was submitted
to the Governor for advice.
He realized fully that a big need required a big remedy, and heartily
endorsed the plan for the building. My own view, which time has fully
justified, was that only so large a building as one costing two hundred
thousand dollars could ever hope to meet the problem. The merchants in
St. John's came to our aid with their accustomed really noble
generosity, and with the help of friends outside the Colony, in the year
1911, with approximately a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars in
hand, we came to the time of laying the foundation stone. But the
hostility of enemies was not over.
We obtained the promise of King George V that if we connected the
foundation stone with Buckingham Palace by wire, he would, directly
after the ceremony of his Coronation in Westminster Abbey, press a
button at three o'clock in the afternoon and so lay the stone across the
Atlantic. The services of our good friends in the Anglo-American
Telegraph Company did the rest.
On the great day His Excellency the Governor made an appropriate speech.
Owing to the difference in time of about three hours and twenty minutes,
it was shortly before twelve o'clock with us. The noonday gun was fired
from the Narrows during the Governor's address. Then followed a prayer
by His Lordship the Bishop of Newfoundland and Bermuda—and then, dead
silence. Everyone was waiting for our newly crowned King to put that
stone into place. A second had passed, the Governor had just said, 'We
will wait for the King,' when 'Bang, bang,' went the gong to notify us
that His Majesty was at the other end of the wire. Slowly the great
stone began to move. A storm of cheering greeted the successful effort;
and all our enemies could say was, 'It was a fake.' Nor might they have
been so far off the mark as they supposed, for we had a man with a knife
under the platform ready to make that stone come down if anything
happened to the wire so that the device did not work. You cannot go back
on your King. Fortunately, our subterfuge was unnecessary.
If the summer of 1910 had brought me a large crop of personal worries in
connection with our co-operative stores, it was a little later that same
year that one of the most forward steps for the Mission was made. The
late Mr. George B. Cluett, of Troy, New York, built specially for our
work a beautiful three-masted schooner. She was constructed of
three-inch plank and sheathed with hardwood for use in our icefields.
Mr. Cluett had asked me if I would like any words from the Bible on her
plate, and I had suggested, 'The sea is His, and He made it.' We were
somewhat surprised, however, when we discovered that the fine bronze
tablet in her bore the inscription, 'This vessel with full equipment was
presented by George B. Cluett to Wilfred T. Grenfell. The sea is His,
and He made it.'
Mr. Cluett's idea was that, as we had heavy expenses in carrying endless
freight so far north, and as it was often broken or damaged or lost in
transit, the schooner could not only obviate this trouble by carrying
our own freight, but in winter, when our sea is frozen, could earn
enough to dead-head our own freight charges.
During the early years of the War we found freights easy to obtain, when
the _George B. Cluett_ was not in our direct service. Later, an
inexperienced captain, running her too far before the trade winds during
a voyage to Brazil, found himself too close to a lee shore to beat off
and was forced to anchor. A passing Brazilian gunboat towed her ten
miles out to sea for safety; but when she reached port at last, she
found an injunction placed on her for ten thousand dollars. It was an
iniquitous charge, but we were forced to pay it before our vessel could
put to sea again. This delayed her so long in harbour that she was
riddled with boring worms which are so numerous in those warm waters,
and she sank on the voyage home in the roadstead of the Bahamas. A suit
was at once instituted against the Brazilian Government by one of our
directors, a well-known marine lawyer in Boston, and was won in three
courts after appeals had been made, the salvage being reduced to eight
hundred dollars from ten thousand. A further appeal was made, however,
and year after year the final trial has been delayed, so we have never
been able to get back one cent, though fifteen years have elapsed since
the first judgment was given in our favour. Nor does it look in the
least probable that justice is procurable in Brazil, which I write in
the hope that some honest Brazilian may take the matter up for his
country's honour. Our lawyer brought to my notice an ancient case in
England, where a marine lawsuit was not finally settled for over one
hundred years, during which time every single soul interested on both
sides had died.
Our lost schooner has been replaced by a new one, once more made
possible by the Cluett family, than whom this work has no truer friends.
The beautiful new vessel is fitted with powerful new heavy oil engines,
is run chiefly by a volunteer crew, with a free engineer supplied each
summer by another old friend in Boston. Her first voyage was begun from
T Wharf in Boston, and in her hangs a fine photograph of Mr. and Mrs.
Henry Ford, who came to a farewell meal on board just before we sailed.
This send-off we kept absolutely secret, but in some way it leaked out,
so that the civic authorities had to send a special posse of police to
the old wharf to make it possible for our distinguished guests to get to
and from the ship.
Another event of that day stands out vividly in my memory. Mayor Curley
of Boston invited me to lunch at the City Hall and to accept a
loving-cup on behalf of the Corporation, at the very hour that Mr. and
Mrs. Ford were to be our guests on board. Most graciously, we were
allowed to adapt the times so that I could attend both functions. It was
a great encouragement to realize how times have changed for the better
when a Roman Catholic chief magistrate of Boston hands to the Protestant
leader of an international mission on a ship lying at the head of the
fateful T Wharf such a delightful bouquet as a large silver cup, which
is now a highly prized ornament in my sanctum.
In 1921 the beautiful little S.S. _Strathcona_ was badly rusted out. She
had had, besides several strandings, to lie in winter in the heavy ice
of our harbour, since at that time we had no haul-up slip. She had twice
filled with water when sucked down by the pressure of the ice. Twice we
had had to saw and dynamite her out of the grim grip of Jack Frost. When
examined by Lloyd's surveyor, owing chiefly to the unavoidable
'sweating' in winter her steel ribs were found to be literally almost
thin enough to shave with, her deck-beams were letting down the deck,
and the bolts which held the deckhouse were so reduced to skeletons that
we still preserve specimens among our curios, as an example of what moth
and rust can do in the way of corruption in the North.
Lady Strathcona came to our aid and most generously reconditioned the
steamer for us. In 1923, however, late in the fall, in a gale of wind,
she sank in a hundred and fifty fathoms of water, conquered at last,
after a quarter of a century's plucky service, by Father Neptune, whom
she had so long defied. Though some things precious to myself went down
with her, no lives were lost, the crew being picked up in their dory by
a fishing schooner that 'chanced their way.' I have only the
satisfaction of knowing that somewhere, all those fathoms down, the
legend on her brass wheel is preaching to the fishes, which our patron
saint, St. Anthony, is said to have done also when no one else would
listen to him. It reads, 'Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of
men.'
On our arrival at Southampton, a former civil engineer, who lives near
by, chanced to speak to me of a fine little steam yacht lying on the
hard for sale at a bargain price. Friends blamed me for buying it. It
was, as they said truly, 'too big to send across on the deck of a
transport,' and, being only eighty-four feet long, 'too small to steam
across.' They were certain 'we could never hire anyone to risk his life
crossing the western ocean on a steamer only able to carry thirteen tons
of coal.' It was 'foolish to think of it, and criminal to allow it,' on
my part.
I could only reply that I had not the slightest intention of hiring
anyone to take her across, but I was going to ask friends to take her
over voluntarily as a service to the Labrador. This may have looked like
'passing the buck,' but it was a job I would have loved myself had I
been free from other work; and it wasn't a week before we had applicants
a-plenty for the opportunity.
When leaving Southampton in June, the little ship, which we had
rechristened _Strathcona II_, was anchored just under the S.S.
_Berengaria_, giant of the seas. My whimsical friend the captain could
not resist the temptation, as a fellow trans-Atlantic steamer commander,
of calling on the captain of the _Berengaria_ and offering to carry
messages across the sea for him. When the captain of the _Berengaria_
had gazed away down over his rail at the 'mosquito' below, he countered
by requesting the privilege of taking _Strathcona II_ in davits for his
westward voyage and dropping her off on the other side.
Our tiny little craft went by way of Vigo and the Azores and arrived in
St. John's, Newfoundland, with five tons of coal to spare. They lost
nothing coming over but their one sheep, which had been destined for a
festive dinner when the half-way mark was reached. That sheep, however,
seemed to prefer drowning to roasting. When the captain and engineer
handed over the boat to us, they certainly did not express any regrets
that their splendid services were not even partially cancelled by
dollars.
But we have been getting ahead of our story, and must retrace our steps
once more to 1913.
CHAPTER XIX
LIGHT AND SHADE
AT the close of 1913, after a heavy lecture tour in America, my wife and
I found ourselves at my old home in England, enjoying a few days' rest
prior to taking a month's holiday, which would direct our minds into
other channels than Labrador and enable us subsequently to return to our
various problems with fresh enthusiasm and strength. Boxing Day,
therefore, found us bound for Rome.
For a time one is glad to forget the future and its uncertainties and
live in the past and its accomplishments. Sitting in the Coliseum in the
moonlight, we conjured up the picture of gladiators fighting to amuse
the 'civilized' men of their day, and gentle women and innocent men
dying horrible deaths for truths which are still to-day by far our most
priceless heritage.
It must be confessed that so-called religious buildings, religious
pictures, and religious conventions of all sorts soon pall on my
temperament. Doubtless it is a defect in my make-up, like my inability
to appreciate classical music. It is still quoted against me in the
family circle that I asked an important Doctor of Music of London,
visiting our Coast and offering generously to give a concert in the
school hall, but finding this impossible owing to the demise of one of
the keys on the venerable piano, 'But is it an important note?'
In almost every English home Brindisi is a household word, especially in
one like ours with literally dozens of relatives who have served India
either in the Army or in the Civil Service. So I was glad to sail for
Athens from that port. Patras also woke an answering note in my mind as
it has long been a distributing centre for our Labrador fish. Indeed, we
saw three forlorn-looking Newfoundland schooners lying at anchor in the
harbour.
Both in Greece and Rome one almost resented the fact that a place
civilized thousands of years ago, and which had loomed so large in one's
youthful imagination as the home of Socrates, of Plato, of Homer, of
Achilles, of Spartan warriors and immortal poets, should be so small and
so barren. In Athens one saw so many interesting relics within a few
hundred yards that one had the sensation of having eaten a meal too
rapidly. When one sat in Xerxes' Seat and conjured up that old picture,
and saw the meaning to the world of the great deed for which men so
gladly gave their lives to defeat a tyrant seeking for world power, it
made one love the old Greeks.
On Mars Hill we stood on the spot where one of the very greatest figures
in history pleaded with his fellows to accept love as the only permanent
source of power and happiness. But as in our modern civilizations, every
monument, every bas-relief, every tombstone showed that physical
fighters were their ideal.
Though the Turks had been carrying off the precious historic marbles of
Ephesus to burn in their kilns as lime for their fields, still the
preservation of the city surprised us. Here again we stood on the very
rostrum where Saint Paul had stood when he had trouble with a certain
coppersmith. At the time of our visit, the only living inhabitant of the
once great city was a moth-eaten ass which we saw tethered in a
dressing-room beneath the stage of this famous auditorium.
The anachronism of buzzing along a Roman road, which had not been
repaired since the days of the Caesars, on our way to Pergamos in the
only Ford car in the country at that time, was punctuated by our having
to get out and shove whenever we came to a cross-drain. The night at
Soma, which is the terminus of the branch railroad in the direction of
Pergamos, we spent in the 'best hotel.' Only half of this structure,
however, was intended for humans. A detachment of unfortunate Turkish
soldiers was billeted below in the quarters designed for the other
animals. Snow lay deep on the ground, and it was bitterly cold. The
wretched soldiers were sleeping literally on the stones of the floor. We
were cold, and we felt so sorry for them that, after we had enjoyed a
hot breakfast, in a fit of generosity we sent them a couple of baskets
of Turkish specialties. Later in the day we noticed that wherever we
went a Turkish soldier with a rifle followed us. As guide to speak the
many dialects for us we had a Greek graduate of the International
College at Smyrna, a delightful and intelligent young fellow, proud of a
newly acquired American citizenship. At last we stopped and bribed the
soldier to tell us what the trouble was. 'Our officers thought you must
be spies since you sent gifts to Turkish soldiers,' he admitted finally.
At Pergamos a Greek Christian invited us to be his guests on the Greek
Christmas Eve. It was the occasion of a large family gathering of fine
young men and handsome, dark-eyed girls. The house had all the
accessories of a delightful Christian home. When the outer gates had
been locked, the inner doors bolted, and the blinds carefully drawn, and
when all possible corners had been examined for spies, the usual
festivities were observed. These families of the conquered race have
lived in bondage for some four hundred years, but their patriotism has
no more dimmed than did that of ancient Israel under her oppressors.
They danced for us the famous Suliote Dance—memorial of the brave Greek
girls who, driven to their last stand on a rocky hill-top, jumped one by
one over the precipice as in the dance each in turn reached the edge,
rather than submit to shame and slavery.
At Constantinople, the kindness of Mr. Morgenthau, the American
Ambassador, and the optimism bred by Robert College and Girls' School,
left delightful memories of even the few days in winter we were able to
spend there. The museum alone is worth a long journey to see—it was
like a leap back into history. It seemed but a step beyond it to the
Neanderthal skull and our troglodyte forbears.
Owing to the necessity of reaching England quickly for our lecture tour,
we returned by train through Bulgaria and Serbia, with brief stops at
Budapest and Vienna. The month's holiday had done for us just what we
hoped—started us on our lecturing with a feeling that after all
Labrador was a worth-while spot for one's life-work. It helped also to
lessen the fatigue of the lectures by travelling in a motor car of my
brother's, in which we lived, moved, and had our being—and our meals by
the roadside—all the way from an old Border castle on the line of the
old Roman Wall almost to Land's End. Then once more the _Mauretania_
carried us to America, whence we wended our way northward to Labrador as
soon as the winter's ice broke up on the Coast.
Early in July, the Duke of Connaught, the Governor-General of Canada,
paid us a long-promised visit. It was highly appreciated by the
fishermen, who would possibly have given him more undivided attention if
he had not been thoughtful enough to send his band ashore, knowing that
the people had never heard one before. The uniform of the bandmaster was
so resplendent that he was instantly mistaken for the Duke, who was clad
in simple mufti—about which the people experienced much the same
feeling as did a little boy at one of my lectures, years afterwards. On
seeing Lady Grenfell in the lobby, he looked up at her and remarked
tearfully, 'I have shaken hands with a real knight, but he left his
armour at home.'
In the autumn of 1915, I was urged by the Harvard Surgical Unit to make
one of their number for their proposed term of service in a base
hospital in France. Having discussed the matter with my directors, we
decided that it was justifiable to postpone the lecture tour which had
been arranged for me, in view of this new opportunity.
It was Christmas and snow was on the ground when I arrived in France.
There was much talk of trench feet and cold. Our life in the North had
afforded us some experiences more like those at the front than most
people's. We were forced to try and obtain warmth and mobility combined
with economy, especially in food and clothing. I therefore ventured to
send to the _British Medical Journal_ a summary of deductions from our
Labrador experiences. Clothes only keep heat in and damp out.
Thickness—not even fur—will never warm a statue; and our ideal has
been to obtain light, wind- and water-proof material and a pattern which
prevents leakage of the body's heat from the neck, wrists, knees, and
ankles. Our skin boots, by being water-tight and roomy, remove the cause
of trench feet, and the defects, either in wet and cold or in hot
weather, of woollen cloth are obvious.
One of the soldiers who came under my care had a bullet wound through
the palm of his hand. I happened to ask him where his hand had been when
hit. He said: 'On my hip. We were mending a break in our barbed wire at
night, and a fixed rifle got me, exactly where it got my chum just
afterwards, but it went through him.'
'Where did your bullet go?'
'I don't know,' he answered.
An examination of his trousers showed the bullet in his pocket. It was
embedded in three pennies and three francs which he happened to be
carrying there, and which his wounded hand had prevented his feeling for
afterward.
Pathos and humour, like genius and madness, are close akin. One of the
boys told me of his chum, who was very 'churchy' and always carried an
Episcopal Prayer Book in his pocket—for which he was not a little
chaffed. For a joke one day he was presented with a second that a
messmate had received, but for which he had no use. His scruples about
'wasting it' made him put it in his pocket with the other. Soon after
this, in an advance, he was shot in the chest. The bullet passed right
through the first Prayer Book and lodged in the second, where it was
found on his arrival in hospital for another slight wound. He at least
will long continue to swear by the Book of Common Prayer.
One day, walking with other officers in the country, we stumbled across
a tiny isolated farm. As usual, the voice of the inevitable Tommy could
be heard from within. They were tending cavalry horses, which filled
every available nook and corner behind the lines at a period when
cavalry was considered useless in action. Having learned that one of
these men had been body-servant to a cousin of mine, who was a V.C. at
the time of his death, I asked him for the details. The Germans had
broken through on the left of his command, and it was instantly
imperative to hold the morale while help from the right was summoned.
Jumping on the parapet, my cousin had walked to and fro there
encouraging the line amid volleys of bullets. Suddenly a bullet passed
through his body and he fell forward into the trench. Protesting that he
was all right, he despatched his orderly to tell the Colonel that he
could hold out until he should come back; but on his return he found
that my cousin was dead. But help came, the line held, and the German
attack was a costly failure. His servant had collected and turned in all
his little personal possessions of any value which he found on the body.
'I think you should have got a Military Cross,' I said.
'I did get an M.C.,' he answered.
'I congratulate you,' I replied.
'It was confinement to barracks. A bullet had smashed to pieces a little
wrist watch which the Captain always carried. It was quite valueless,
and I kept the remnants as a memento of a man whom everyone loved. But a
comrade got back at me by reporting it to headquarters, and they had to
punish me, they said.'
When at the close of the period for which I had volunteered, I had to
decide whether to sign on again, my inclination was to stay for at least
another term; but as my commandant informed me that he and a number of
the busier men felt that duty called them home, and that there were
plenty of volunteers then to take our places, my judgment convinced me
that I was more needed in Labrador.
Since the original chapter on my brief experience at the War was
written, the whole world has been forced to accept new and revolutionary
ideas of values. Long ago, the despised John the Baptist was beheaded
for telling his generation that the material was after all ephemeral.
Christ was put to death, as many a pacifist has been, because the pride
of the practical man and the current scientist precluded their
understanding that any 'mere emotion' could be of greater value for
achievement than steel and high explosives.
Internationalism is already beginning to be the slogan of thinkers. They
are even approving the contention that patriotism and nationalism, after
all, are not synonymous terms. If a perfect world could be run by robots
on the basis of mathematics, logic, and force, the world would
immediately act on that conclusion and would become a federation of
nations, with free trade and free intercourse. The fact is, however,
that fear has driven convinced free traders to hide behind walls they
call tariffs, hoping possibly to prove once for all the terribly
inevitable results.
The most ardent Bombastes Furioso now admits in his sober moments that
men are less likely to fight if they have nothing to fight with; and
that disarmament may after all be a rational measure. Is it the emotion
called fear, and not logic, which prevents disarmament among the
nations?
It seems unthinkable that all the supposed rulers, governors, wise men,
and sages could possibly have all alike been fooled by the
will-o'-the-wisp, and based their lives and policies on illusion. All
the great warriors and founders of empires, all the conquering heroes of
the ages, could they all have been so radically wrong in their mentality
as to have been following a phantom; and all their untold expenditures
of men, money, and material been used for destruction and not for the
real upbuilding of anything durable and abiding?
Is it possible that we, even we, have ears that hear not, eyes that see
not, and hearts that do not understand? If we have, what is the emotion
which keeps us from admitting it?
CHAPTER XX
THEY THAT DO BUSINESS IN GREAT WATERS
IN the past, transportation has been our greatest difficulty.
Communication during the winter months was only possible by relays of
dog-teams coming all the way from Quebec. Volumes of adventure could be
written about the experiences of our mail-men. Two winters we arranged
to side-track the mail across the Straits of Belle Isle, since we get a
weekly mail by dogs at our Newfoundland stations. It was for this reason
that we were forced forty years ago to make our winter headquarters at
St. Anthony. To us, who have to raise the budget for our work,
communication spells existence.
Of all the many mail-men, Ernest Doane, who undertook this attempt to
carry the mail across the Straits, took the greatest risks. He is still
the only man in the world's history who ever crossed that terribly
dangerous running ice in winter. The narrowest place is nine miles wide,
and occasionally violent storms from the east drive with irresistible
force millions of tons of heavy floe into the V-shaped Straits from the
Atlantic. The turmoil of the enormous masses grinding and smashing and
turning over under the irresistible pressure, or 'rafting' or being
forced over or under other huge pans, is one of the wildest sights in
Nature to watch. It is a veritable struggle of those most terrible
giants, wind, frost, sea, and heavy tides. Not presence of mind, but
absence of body, is then man's best hope.
In order to attempt the crossing, Doane constructed a very light canvas
flatboat, and also a small, light, tough sledge, put together with
neither screws nor nails, but only skin lashings. Either the boat or the
sledge could be carried in the other, according to whether it was open
water or ice he must cross. In these he stowed food and such light
accessories as his long training as a skilful trapper had taught him
would be of most service: a compass, a water-tight matchbox, a knife, an
axe, a sleeping-bag being _sine qua non_. It took a life's experience to
choose wisely a point of departure that would allow for the drift of
both wind and current. Research has shown how subject the tides
themselves are in this section to wind; that sometimes an entire tide
will miss out; that both rising and falling tide flow in the same
direction, to say nothing of the fact that the flow direction differs as
one crosses from one side the Straits to the other—all facts that have
cost many a mariner dear in the old days.
It is not to be wondered at that Doane twice nearly lost the mails and
his life by drifting beyond Anchor Point into the open Gulf of St.
Lawrence. Since crossing in one day was impossible, he had to sleep on a
floor which might capsize at any moment and throw him into eternity by
way of an icy sea in the thick darkness. His reward was only fifty
dollars for each venture. After four crossings he resigned office—and
no successor has been found.
To-day, wireless telegraphy and the radio have partially solved this
problem of communication. Volunteers have erected amateur wireless
plants at three of our hospitals, though, as there is a Marconi wireless
station in Sandwich Bay, the plant erected there has not yet received a
licence. Thanks to friends, we own ten radio sets which meet all the
receiving needs of their several localities. Formerly, Labrador was able
to get news from the outside world only once in the winter. Now we can
hear Big Ben striking in Westminster, listen to preachers in New York,
switch on public news and concerts from Schenectady or Chicago, hear the
words of lectures from Montreal sooner than the people sitting in the
backs of the halls where they are delivered, talk to fellow-beings in
Berlin, or even send messages to cousins in New Zealand, which by
calendar are received hours before we start them off. With the advent of
television, Labrador can be an ideal summer resort, as well as a
sportsman's winter paradise, where you can shut out the noise of
civilization when you wish.
A great source of loss to our poor fishermen comes from damage to
vessels by storm or ice or rocks. Every wooden vessel, for its own
welfare, should really go on dock for repair and cleaning once a year.
For generations the only docks in the whole Colony were in the extreme
south, and every fishing craft northbound was sure to waste invaluable
time going out of the way to reach it in a season of open water already
made too short by ice conditions. Fish are often to be caught long
before the schooners can get down North, and they cannot by any means
remain long. These facts suggested to us that such an assistance to a
people living by fishery in the North was an elemental necessity. When
that violent cyclone drove forty-one vessels on to the rocks of
Labrador, I could pull off only one or two with any advantage, though
many of the rest could easily have been repaired on a dry-dock, had one
been at hand. However, for them to attempt to go far to the south,
through six hundred miles of open Atlantic in their badly crippled
condition, was quite impracticable. Fishermen are poor economists,
anyhow, and it was not easy for them to understand, when insurance was
being paid for the loss of their ship, that it was really they who were
standing the loss, since, almost without exception, they were all in
mutual insurance companies or clubs.
The need was further forced upon us when nine vessels drove ashore in
one harbour in the Straits of Belle Isle. The larger number of these
could easily have been saved had there been a haul-up slip within
reasonable reach. As it was, all were lost, and hundreds of people went
hungry as a result. Often heroic attempts were made to save these craft.
One resourceful skipper, at low tide, battened down canvas on the inside
over the gaping hole in the ship's bilge, filled up as much space as he
could with hard ship's biscuit, then nailed down stout boards again on
the top of the mass of biscuits, and over that strengthened the ballast
deck. With the pumps going, he worked his way south, the swelling up of
the biscuits caulking the hole sufficiently to enable him to keep her
afloat.
To save another which I had myself hauled off the rocks, we keel-hauled
a heavy topsail under the leaky bottom, then flung in peat between the
canvas and the ship, and with the pumps were able to free the craft of
water, while we partially patched her on the inside. In that condition
her skipper sailed her five hundred miles to a dry-dock.
So we decided that in these days it was an interpretation of the Gospel
(provided no one else would attempt it) to consider the saving of
vessels as on a par with the service rendered in sending home wrecked
crews after they had lost everything, including all chance of getting
even food for the long winter. To us it seemed on a par with the value
of hospitals for saving men suffering from food deficiencies which had
been caused by their having lost their vessels.
So we let our great need for a haul-up slip in the North be known. Years
later, our director and friend of years, Mr. Hollis French, told us
that, if a dock were needed so badly, we might send him an estimate of
the cost, and an anonymous donor would consider giving it to us. The
result was that in 1930 we opened in St. Anthony a beautiful dock, on to
which we could haul vessels up to one hundred and fifty feet on the keel
which needed repairs. It is a veritable hospital for injured craft.
The only outside skill we commandeered to erect it was that of a diver
with his outfit. All the rest was done by our local boys, and before it
was finished one of the Labrador boys was an accomplished diver, and our
friend from outside returned home without his diving-suit and gear. The
cost of the dock was thirty-seven thousand dollars, and, had we had to
import labour, would have been double that. Not one of us to this day
has any idea who paid the bills. It must have been hard for even so
Christian a donor to keep his left hand from knowing the cheques his
right hand signed.
Our good friends the critics (for we do owe them debts for helping to
make us toe the mark) dubbed it another 'Grenfell's folly,' and it was
not without trepidation that even so confirmed an optimist as myself
awaited results. Excitement ran high when in the autumn, returning to
St. Anthony, I met the Labrador orphan now our electrical engineer and
in charge of the new dock, and asked him how much loss my 'new folly'
would mean to our budget. Even that first year it proved much less than
I had feared; and in 1931 the dock has shown a balance of profit even
after allowing for depreciation. Better than that, each year it has
saved several schooners.
In 1931 we ourselves towed in one schooner with her rudder gone, and
another, a large Banker, for a distance of over one hundred and fifty
miles. She had been on the rocks, and when we took her in tow for
forty-eight hours the crew had been working day and night at the pumps
at the rate of seven thousand strokes an hour. Over fifty schooners
docked there this summer, and one or two steamers. Even one with a
broken shaft was repaired and proceeded on her fishing voyage. In all
our work, each of us is but one small factor. Government, merchants,
friends, and fishermen have all helped and encouraged the efforts so
untiringly that to write the story as if it were the biography of one
man's work would be enough to destroy any value the record carried. One
man is only a tiny cog in the economy of God, and without these generous
helpers one man could accomplish practically nothing.
A politician, no doubt, would have proclaimed as the most important
advance in these past years the fact that the boundaries of Labrador in
1927 were finally settled by the greatest lawyers in England and the
highest of all tribunals, His Majesty's Privy Council. So long as in our
crude civilization natural boundaries must exist, this _is_ of
importance. Certainly it cost more than any other activity for Labrador
has ever cost. We hope it may bring much return in labour, which is,
after all, the real blessing of earth. It did give us the benefit of a
good chart of Hamilton Inlet, a chart paid for by Canada, which, as it
lost many times the territory which Newfoundland ever expected to get,
is obliged to be contented with the joy of service, and the knowledge
that its work will help greatly to develop the coming tourist traffic,
in bringing prospectors to the Coast, and by opening a field for
investment in mines, power, and timber. Timber we know to be there, and
almost unequalled water-power owing to the Grand Falls, the Yale Falls,
both among the world's finest of panoramas. It was the discovery of so
much mineral wealth in exactly the same geological formation farther
west which has helped to make Canada the richest
precious-metal-producing country in the world.
Only a few years ago, so prosaic, and one might almost say scientific,
an enterprise as a survey of a country just because it was scientific
would hardly have been considered any part of the 'preaching of the
Gospel.' Religion apostrophizes much more the merits of the anchorite
and the 'withdrawal from all practical business activities.' This
mundane occupation of making safer the lives of the men who 'go down to
the sea' and of opening up the country to the world outside asserted
itself to me with ever-increasing insistence, not only by day, but often
in visions of the night, as being better Christianity than waiting to
play the Good Samaritan to the surviving families of those fishermen who
had been drowned because no reliable chart existed.
[Illustration: LABRADOR SHEEP]
[Illustration: CABBAGES—A TRIUMPH]
The best way to get rid of an enemy is to make him your friend, so we
gathered up all the available charts of the entire Coast, from the
picturesque products of the famous Captain Cook to those which we had
ourselves painfully made and suffered from in years gone by, and decided
to devote every bit of time and energy possible to the problem of making
a reliable chart.
The British Admiralty wished to help, but had no boat to spare. They
promised to send a steamer as soon as one was free. The Canadian
Government needed a harbour of refuge in the North Labrador for their
grain boats going to England by the new Hudson Bay route and so they
wanted to help also, but were not allowed to land surveying parties. The
cost of a proper chart would probably run into a very large sum of
money. Our directors in those anxious times had no funds to spare for
the purpose. I had none myself. There must be as much money as ever on
the globe's surface if we are really to believe modern science that
there is no waste. A ridiculous quatrain got running through my head:
There was a young lady said, Why
Can't I see down my ear with my eye?
If I put my mind to it, I surely can do it;
You never can tell till you try!
So we tried, and a great deal of it was already accomplished in 1931. It
happened in this way:
A member of my own profession, the Professor of Physiology of Harvard
University, by name Alexander Forbes, a lifelong friend, had developed
air-mindedness and had even permitted an ancient shellback like myself
to ride with him over New England to Boston, in his Waco plane. This
all-round scientist also owned a fine power schooner which he navigated
himself. The other essential element, international co-operation, was
also his. The whole labour, practically all the expense as well as the
planning, he nobly assumed. Without Dr. Alexander Forbes none of it
would have been possible.
Rumour has it that Oxford and Harvard always do co-operate. Moreover,
this co-operative spirit is always infectious. Messrs. McColl of Quebec
donated ten thousand gallons of their excellent gasoline. Lord Wakefield
gave one thousand gallons of lubricating oil. The Furness-Withy Line
gave free passages to and fro to five workers coming from England. The
Newfoundland Government gave us freight on their steamers and free
customs entry and licences. A number of able specialists gave us
voluntary service. The Geographical Society of New York undertook to
reduce the observations and to prepare the chart, which we estimate will
cost them many thousands of dollars. The Royal Geographical Society in
London were only so far in a financial position to give their blessing
and their endorsement. Our boats carried reserve supplies for the survey
party, and the _Strathcona_ joined in the work and gave any possible
help she could, consonant with her other obligations. Dr. Forbes found
insurance too expensive and pilotage impossible, so he sailed his own
vessel without any loss over the whole Coast. Occasionally he went ahead
in his Waco plane, which from ten thousand feet up in clear weather
enabled him to outline a course for his vessel free of the shoals which
showed up in the photographs taken from that height.
From a mile up in the air I have looked down on Labrador's shores. Even
from that height the distances and tasks that have seemed so great
through the centuries appeared as easy to overcome as ten thousand tasks
that have been accomplished with far less promising outlook. In the
bottom of the aeroplane was a round hole, through which protruded a
camera. The Englishman who was handling it told me that he had been in
the air doing this work, in various parts of the world, without a single
month's break, for sixteen years, both in the tropics and in the cold,
without one accident. To be 'up in the air' seems to him just as
ordinary an occupation as walking down a sidewalk, and though he covered
with his pictures six hundred square miles in an hour, it was no more
romantic to him than taking photographs in a studio in a city. This able
veteran of the air took some nine hundred nine-by-twelve-inch oblique
pictures. From these another helper, by his own new method, can work out
all the data required for our purposes, except the soundings. He did an
extensive triangulation to locate the pictures exactly.
Dr. Forbes also secured Mr. Noel Odell, the famous climber of Mount
Everest, and once a Professor of Geology at Harvard, now at Cambridge
University, England. He ascended many of our most important mountains,
and, though results are not yet released, he declared that Labrador
mountains afford climbers all the thrill of the Alps, though of all the
highest peaks that rise near the Coast, nothing much over five thousand
feet was measured. Inland from Hopedale, however, mountains over
sixty-two hundred feet have been reported. Three planes flew from tidal
water to the Grand Falls, the Yale Falls, and back to the Coast in under
five hours. As all our trappers take six weeks going in and out by canoe
up the rivers, and as dangers are very great, especially when there is
much ice in the turbulent rivers in the spring and only very few
supplies can be carried, our aerial service, which could be easily
supplied, would be of great value.
In 1932 I received a preliminary notice that the British Admiralty had
purchased and fitted out an especially sheathed sixteen-hundred-ton
steamer, and were sending her out in the spring for an unlimited period
to complete the survey of the Coast of Labrador. For many days I was
walking on air, in a state of what my friends called 'a psychic uplift,'
for the new survey is to include hydrographic soundings and reliable
charts.
For forty years I have been cruising this coast-line among fishermen,
and have climbed some of its peaks near the shoreline. It is of great
interest to science to know the heights, for it is supposed by some that
this is the highest part of the whole of the eastern side of the
American continent. Another point is the fact that, as one gets towards
the northern end, the peaks are of the Matterhorn type, with apparently
unglaciated tops. Scientists are greatly interested in finding out
whether the old ice-cap of this continent ever completely overwhelmed
the whole of the eastern range. The discovery of pre-glacial flora here
suggests that they have remained without having been ever totally
displaced by the ice.
The expedition gave no new names to the endless unnamed islands, capes,
rivers, bays, mountains, or harbours; but some fishermen, to whom I was
explaining that we hoped to give a complete map in a year or two for
their safety, immediately replied, 'We are praying God you will not
leave the old Eskimo names and places, for none of us can pronounce
them, and most of them are alike, anyhow.'
This survey will help to open up Labrador in the only way at present
possible. With the dark clouds now hanging over all financial
enterprises, it will afford North America, at much less cost and much
closer home, fjords, waterfalls, salmon rivers, icebergs, Eskimos,
Indians, auroras, as well as the Greenland glaciers and the Midnight Sun
(of which Norway holds no monopoly), all included in a short,
inexpensive, and exhilarating holiday trip.
Much water has gone under the bridge since the early days on the
Labrador. Our aeroplanes have shown that it was not the limitations of
the Labrador but of the early observers that was the trouble. A solitary
Viking, a Genoese of the fifteenth century, a lonely Breton seaman, even
a major in the English Army, may be excused for pessimism. There is some
bad in all of us. Even to-day a financier escaping from the troubles of
the monetary system of civilization might 'hae his doots' alone on a
Labrador beach; but the rankest materialist with no hopes beyond the
accident called death could not be a sceptic about the value of Labrador
if he had sailed with us through the air over that great country.
CHAPTER XXI
NEW VENTURES
THE synonym, of my best-on-earth friends, for the members of our Council
is deliberate, and is their minimal due. For years they have gathered at
their own cost from hundreds of miles distant, at an expense of time far
more important to them than even the not inconsiderable dollars, just to
shoulder responsibilities for others. Before the quite unusual plan of
this International Grenfell Association was formed, the very idea was
scouted by more critics than I care to think of as being 'impossible.'
'You cannot get an international group of business men to voluntarily
give the time and expense to attend meetings for any Society—at any
rate, not for long enough to understand its business.' Fortunately, I
could not believe that, for the most orthodox faith is but as sounding
brass unless it takes the form of personal sacrifice. Pessimism and
Christianity are the acids and alkalis of philosophy. It is enough to
record that our directors have, to a man, died in their boots.
The one and only parson on the Board, while a student at Amherst, had
enlisted as a Labrador 'wop.' I had allocated him to a group of totally
isolated islands, and had thrown in also the conundrum of how to get
there, as no regular boat service of any kind touched that part. He had
already graduated in my estimation when he arrived at his post in an
open fishing-boat. The record of his services as doctor, lawyer, parson,
teacher, and general Pooh-Bah, during his long vacation there entirely
at his own expense, entitled him to junior and senior graduation in one
bound. The experiences of the summer and the strong strain of shrewd
common sense that permeated his theology led us to urge him to join our
Council. In spite of a family and the endless calls of a large parish,
he has ever since served on it. It was he who not only suggested the
raising of an endowment, but put his broad shoulder to the wheel and
started it rolling.
The view of those who are willing to foist all the least attractive
challenges of life on the Almighty and call that 'faith in God,' to me
is a negation of our responsibility for bringing God's Kingdom on this
earth. It is so much pleasanter to spend funds than collect them; even
as it would be easier to practise medicine in London, if I could rely on
the Almighty to heal the blind and make the lame walk in Labrador by
simply reminding Him that He had forgotten them. A pessimistic parson is
an anomaly, an impractical parson is a menace in proportion to the
increase in intelligence of the man in the street.
Raising money has become a recognized profession. That fact is sealed by
a college diploma. The evidence that its efficiency in placing the
concrete problems at issue before a much larger public in a more
intelligible way than is otherwise possible is endorsed by the enormous
number of people who give their share through that professional channel.
Sloppiness is never excusable—in work for God's Kingdom it is criminal.
Our Council were unanimous in the decision to try to raise a partial
endowment, and a professional man was secured! I can see some of my
readers shiver. In the inexperience of my youth, I resented the idea
that God Himself is a supplicant even for our help. It was easy to say
that raising money to help others spells lack of faith. Professional
mendicancy was the ugly synonym which, when I was young, made me resent
advocating anything, for fear of what others might think.
Our professional's first proposition was to spend his next long holiday,
at his own expense, in Labrador; and to bring his family and study the
problem at first hand. He was young. He was modest. But he could ill
spare the money. Now in retrospect I can think of no one effort of ours
which has accomplished more of permanent value to Labrador, or been more
in line with God's will, than the Endowment Fund. This is no place for
details. It was a poor time to beg. The War had made money very 'tight,'
and promises, like pie-crust, are proverbially poor material to rely
upon.
Lady Grenfell and I accompanied the mobile unit, and associated with us
was a most orthodox Princetonian, beloved of 'wops,' who has been more
familiar to us stripped to the waist and picking rocks and blue clay
from foundations in Labrador than in the conventional accoutrements of
an amateur Shylock. How often I have seen him toilfully conveying after
midnight large bags in a hotel elevator to a bedroom far from the haunts
of gangdom, though in those palmy days the Heroes of Chicago had not yet
developed their wholesale businesses.
Accustomed to a four-hour watch below during the season of open water, I
had learned to sleep through anything except such special impulses as a
dragging anchor, a rising sea, or an actual collision; but even after a
wearisome evening's lecture, it took a long apprenticeship to allow me
to sleep while Lady Grenfell and Bill kept up the clink! clink! clink!
of the 'Aberdonian's friend,' as it was counted out from one bag into
another; or calling the names, addresses, promises, gifts, and
cataloguing and getting all receipts ready, well into the 'wee sma'
hours,' so as to start the next day with a clean sheet.
Dr. Charles X, an unusually healthy-looking young surgeon, and a most
valued and long-time colleague on the Coast, was suggesting to a
stranger a reason for helping Labrador. The lady turned on him with 'You
ought to be ashamed of yourself—a strong young man like you. If I were
like you, I'd go up and help those people myself.' Though taken utterly
by surprise, he did not 'behave himself unseemly,' but suggested regret
at being where he was. 'Well, never mind, I meant to give something,'
and she pulled out and handed him a cheque for a hundred dollars.
Evidently the amazed expression which, at this new development,
succeeded the cloud over his not unattractive features, struck some new
chord, for hastily snatching back the cheque she tore it into fragments,
and, throwing it on the floor, wrote another one and sealed it in an
envelope. He thought it wise to be moving on, as he already felt himself
to be the cynosure of more eyes than he was accustomed to. He is still
puzzled why that lady made the second cheque for five hundred dollars.
Certainly not because of 'much speaking' on his part.
The endowment campaign proved a complete success. We did not acquire any
overwhelming amount before we all had to hurry back to what we
considered 'our work.' But after two years a nucleus had been acquired
that relieves both workers and directors of many anxious hours. The
importance of this hard piece of work was emphasized by the fact that
death comes unexpectedly even to middle age.
My beloved surgical expert colleague, John Mason Little, of Harvard,
suddenly passed on from his home in Boston. It had been his own wish to
be associated even after death with the place 'where the happiest days
of his life had been spent.' His loved ones regard our changing bodies
as we always do, just the temporary medium which enables one's
personality to function. All of it that can persist are its ashes. In
the simplest of urns we took his back to the Coast, and in the face of
the rocky cliff above the hospital he had served so well, we laid them,
sealed, with a small marble slab bearing the legend: 'John Mason Little.
Our True Friend.'
Every summer from far and near people of all shades of thought gather on
a Sunday afternoon on the hill-top, to praise God for speaking audibly
sometimes, so that even our ears hear; and just to ask Him we too may so
live that men may be glad also some day that we had been on earth.
I have been anxious ever since to put up a memorial to his service in
the form of a clock-tower with a four-faced clock that has been given
us, glassed-in so as to keep the snow off its faces. It was an old
timepiece which for years marked the flight of time in a village church
near Kingsley's haunts at Clovelly. It has been put in order and sent
out freely to await the time when we can put it up in some suitable
tower, near the spot where we worked together.
New churches have been built by the people the past few years at
North-West River and at St. Anthony. The latter has been named 'The
Little Church of Saint Andrew the Fisherman.' A perfectly beautiful,
very simple, stained-glass window has been made and donated for the
chancel by the skilled and loving hand of a lady in Brooklyn. It depicts
that prototype of so many of our people landing on the beach of the old
Sea of Galilee, with the painter of his boat in one hand and an oar in
the other. This is the first painted window of its kind ever in our
North Country, and as an object of beauty has a never-ending uplifting
power.
Moreover, for the first time in history we own a parsonage. A centre for
the special work of the Church on earth has great value, if organized
religion is to be helpful to what Christ called 'my Father's business.'
Through the kindness of our friends, the parsonage was launched on its
venture of faith, just as were the greenhouses, hospitals, clothing
store, and so on.
Kerosene is both expensive and dangerous in wooden buildings with
children around, as we found when the orphanage in Sandwich Bay was
destroyed by fire. We have long realized that not only our light bills,
but our heat and power bills will be permanently lowered when we can
afford to harness some of our water supplies. The new water and power
supply at Cartwright, for which a lady in Rochester, New York, is
responsible, is nearly finished; the magnificently unselfish work of two
summer crews of 'wops' on the construction of this has been one of the
best apologies for Christianity I have ever seen.
In St. Anthony we were unable to raise the money to carry out the design
of our beloved consulting engineer in Boston for a hydro-electric plant.
His survey showed it could be done, especially now that the control of
the power-house can be at headquarters without necessitating an extra
man at the dam. So our own men have installed a concrete block
power-house. We regretted greatly not being able to avail ourselves of
all the free water-power going to waste, but more immediate challenges
to help faced us.
Last season, our northernmost waters were so full of fish that we saw
large schooners loaded in a fortnight, one alone having a cargo of three
thousand quintals. However, it cost the owner more to catch it than he
could get for it in the market, and he would have been the gainer had he
stayed at home. So plentiful was fish that summer that, when taking
soundings in shallow water as we approached a strange shore for an
anchorage and were using the light fishing jigger instead of the heavy
lead, we had to give it up; for every time the lead came up, it brought
with it a codfish instead of a mathematical record!
Yet, when we had fish we did not want, and our next-door neighbours had
flour they could not sell, there was no way to adjust matters. During
the winter our little Colony was in great financial straits and had to
try to feed up to sixty thousand fishing folk. In the spring, after an
utterly insufficient diet at six cents a day, they had to face a fishery
half fed, half outfitted, half clad, or else stay at home idle. I tried
in every way that I could to get grain put in sacks and sent down North
in our supply steamer, which could have carried many tons quite free of
cost, as she was going direct from New York to Labrador in any case.
Many influential friends tried to help me, but though a Senator went
himself to the Red Cross in Washington, the only answer I could get was
that Congress had forbidden any of the wheat to be given away outside
the country. We had to buy, therefore, and sent down what little we
could afford, and friends gave us some hand-stone grinders, as the great
need of the whole-wheat had been painfully demonstrated by the numerous
cases of beri-beri, neuritis, and paralysis on the Coast. We also sent
north a few hundreds of sacks of beans that I had bought in early spring
at a bargain. The breakdown of supply and demand is a periodic one
through the centuries, and will be so until the world accepts the fact
that its present interpretation of nationalism is as foolish as it is
disastrous and that high tariff walls are no real solution.
The new instantaneous freezing process has been a real advance. Years
ago we were trying to help our poorer trappers to get more out of their
calling, and incidentally attempting to introduce a new way of providing
furs for ladies at home without the need of catching animals in steel
traps, by having farms in which to rear fur-bearing animals, like any
other domesticated wild animal. Having no experience, and very little
time to devote to the animals, our actual breeding met no success, as
has been related.
Mr. John Hays Hammond fostered the experiment in Labrador by building a
fur-farm near Cartwright and by sending down a young biologist from
Washington as his manager. The story goes that in winter, when Mr.
Birdseye was catching rock cod through the ice to feed his animals, he
noticed one very bitter day, with temperature away below zero and with
the wind sweeping the ice, that the instantly frozen fish, when thawed
out in the kitchen, jumped about again; while on warmer days they did
not so so. A long and most courageous expenditure of time and money
enabled him to discover the secret. But for his brave wife, and
subsequently other friends, he would have had to abandon his quest. The
secret is a very simple one, after all, but of vital, even revolutionary
importance, to any number of food products, such as New Zealand and
Australian mutton, fruit of all kinds, including even fresh things such
as raspberries and citrus fruits. The process enables mankind to put on
the table all the year round, in exactly the same condition as the day
it was killed or picked, any article of food which would otherwise be
perishable and seasonal.
When a food cell containing water is frozen slowly, the water forms a
crystal of ice, which grows large in proportion to the time it takes to
form. Eventually it is larger than the original amount of water and it
bursts the envelope of the cell, as indeed it will that of a solid
cannon ball if shut up within it. On the other hand, if the freezing is
instantaneous, no such thing can happen. When instantly frozen and then
thawed out, the cells do not leak, no mushy quality results, and neither
the taste nor the composition is altered. The muscle cells were able to
contract again—and so cause the fish to jump about. The indirect
results of this effort of Mr. Birdseye's have been of great commercial
benefit to the Coast; and so indirectly, if in no other way, the
fox-farm idea is bearing fruit. Moreover, the Hudson's Bay Company are
still running the original fox-farm.
By far the most enterprising knight of commerce in the North is the
'Honourable Company of Merchant Adventurers,' known as the 'Hudson's Bay
Company.' They immediately and at very great expense applied the
Birdseye discovery to one of our best products, the fat, cold-water,
North Atlantic salmon. Recently, a company consisting mostly of
fishmongers of London were entertained at dinner, and different
varieties of salmon were served. When the guests were asked to select
the most palatable fresh salmon, sixteen out of the twenty are said to
have selected Labrador salmon which had been frozen by this method,
thawed out again, cooked and served. Queen Mary purchased at an
Exhibition some Labrador frozen salmon. A short while after, we were
accorded an interview at Buckingham Palace, when, after reminding her
that our first little Labrador hospital steamer had been by her wish
christened the _Princess May_ (her name in those days), I ventured to
ask what Her Majesty had thought of the salmon. It is only because her
reply was so complimentary that I have recorded the incident.
The difficulties of prejudice and vested interests make it as hard to
introduce a new product into a European market as it is to forbid the
sale of an old product in America. As always, money was lost in
experimenting, and more salmon was put on the market than it could bear
at first. At the moment, depression was playing havoc with every
commercial company, and the easy way would have been to give up the
attempt. The chivalry of the genuine adventurer in commerce is just as
real as that of the pulpit or forum. So far this particular discovery
has been a vital message of love to many, for it has meant just the
difference between hunger and sufficiency to the families of our salmon
fishers. For thus they are able to sell their catch straight from the
net, without cutting the bones out, without salt which many now could
not afford, and without having to put it in barrels; and that at an even
better price than before. Because of its low price, it certainly will
mean in time access to a delicious and valuable food for many in our big
cities, such as my old friends in the East End of London, who never
otherwise would be able to afford such a delicacy. In addition, our fat
codfish, similarly preserved, are on trial, and will one day
unquestionably supplant the present salt product and so command new
markets as a far more palatable product. 'The Company' have also been
testing our halibut by having a ship of their own to catch it on the
newly discovered Halibut Banks, and treat it also by the new process.
Its liver contains, it is said, five times the vitamins of cod-liver
oil.
The Hudson's Bay Company have been real pioneers also in developing
other native products, and have spent huge sums in finding industrial
remunerative work for the Eskimos and Indians, who form the larger part
of their clientele in the North. Their embroidery on deerskin and
sealskin, their bead and silk work, and their recent efforts to market
our berries and all local assets deserve the heartiest gratitude of all
who love Labrador. On one occasion many years ago, I had felt it my duty
to hold up the chief trader of their head post on a question of cash
payments. Our industrial and co-operative efforts had brought us much
hostility from the old order of traders. I was alone, with only a small
fishermen crew, and I suppose I looked discouraged and disheartened as I
walked back down the Company's wharf to my boat. I felt I should be
misunderstood and probably misrepresented in England, and that I had
lost friends when I most needed them. That night a young clerk came
alongside our boat. He gave me an envelope, saying, 'I wanted you to
know you had one friend here, anyhow.' There was ten dollars in the
envelope. Ten-dollar bills were very scarce in those days in Labrador,
but something invisible besides the bill made it worth many tens to me.
I do not wonder that that boy, as he was then, has made his mark in the
world, and is a trusted and honoured man to-day. Would anyone suggest
that the ten dollars was the only important factor that has prevented
that incident from slipping from my memory all these years later?
Something like that was said of a woman that once merely wiped a
Carpenter's feet with her hair, and bathed them with her tears.
Whaling made great strides for a few years when a Norwegian company
brought to Gready Islands, Labrador, huge portable buildings and a big
'mother' steamer. These men were of no little assistance, for they were
genuinely interested in our work, and helped liberally with coal, whale
meat, hospitality, and especially by locating a number of uncharted
rocks which even we of the inner circle of the wrecked had never
discovered. They were bitterly attacked, however, and subjected to much
hostility by moribund vested interests, and their activities so
restricted that they were forced to abandon the enterprise. Now as we
pass Gready, we sadly lament the lost circulation of money and labour,
for, as usual, nothing else whatever was substituted by the destructive
critics. The irony of the _dénouement_, however, lies in the fact that
the prices of whale oil, bone, fertilizer, and other products have all
fallen steadily to so low a figure that the only other and much older
local factory on the Coast has also been forced to close down, and that
after suffering serious losses during these past lean years. At least
the Norwegian company was saved such an aftermath.
In the fall of 1930, fishermen were settling up for their voyage and for
winter at Battle Harbour. The office of the old company, Baine, Johnston
and Company, was in their large storehouse. As usual at noon, the doors
were locked while all hands adjourned for lunch. An hour later the whole
place was in a blaze. A strong wind was blowing. Everyone worked to save
the village, but so fierce was the conflagration that even the Marconi
pole on the top of the hill was burned. Our first hospital and its
auxiliary buildings all went. After thirty-eight years, we felt the loss
bitterly, for the triumphs and defeats of all our early work seemed to
cluster around that, our original building. A cigarette end thrown on to
a floor on which lay a good deal of excelsior, fresh from the unpacking
of the winter supplies, caused the fire. The real things of life cannot
be burned, however, and already a new school, small hospital, and
outbuildings are functioning under Dr. Moret and his wife at St. Mary's
River, the basin that forms the mouth of a beautiful salmon stream. It
is a much better situation. It is free to go its own way, for it owns
its own lands, has its own water-supply laid on the house, is only seven
miles away from Battle Harbour, and is on the mainland and consequently
much more accessible in winter.
Meanwhile, Cartwright has begun to be developed as the coming capital of
the Labrador. Already the boarding-school is going full swing, and a
letter this week by aeroplane from the lady in charge gives an
encouraging account of progress, especially of the way the people of the
bay and district are benefiting and rallying around it.
That very letter was left by mail plane at St. Anthony. The pilot very
kindly took up our dental officer there for a few minutes in the air,
while the mail was being sorted. Fog shut in suddenly, and the plane and
its occupants were never seen again. A plane kindly lent by a director,
with a volunteer crew, at once flew north and searched the Coast, and so
did one sent by the Government—alas, without any success.
From the lady head of our Cartwright station, the letter brought me
this: 'My time of service is up, but I literally cannot tear myself
away. Will you accept me for another term of three years?'
At North-West River, Dr. Paddon has been given the use of the power
yacht _Maraval_, a donation by a lady in New York, and with it he is
able really to get around his district with Indian Harbour Hospital as
his outside base in summer.
Harrington Hospital Station and Mutton Bay Nursing Station on the
Canadian Labrador have made much progress. Dr. Hodd is now Justice of
the Peace, agent for the Indians, has a new boat of his own, and has
been accorded a new stone wharf by the Canadian Government. A fine X-ray
apparatus and electric light have been added to his equipment and the
efficiency and range of his work have been materially increased.
Forteau also has leaped ahead under the able service of the nurse in
charge and a Scotch volunteer with a burr and all that it signifies. In
spite of the terrible experiences of unsold voyages of fish, a new
courage has possessed this village. Judging by the quantities of
potatoes produced, even from clearings-away among the tangled tuckamore,
stunted trees and roots that run for miles, one would expect at least
one worker there to be a Bridget rather than a Lebe, but both are Scotch
workers. If only one of the village oracles could write as they talk, we
could publish a book that would make even _Alice in Wonderland_ tremble
for its laurels. No big buildings, no great outlay of money, just real
religion expressed in the humblest and most ordinary activities, and lo!
joy and peace reign, that money cannot buy. If the dreams of these two
modern apostles, sent out as were those of old to preach the Gospel and
heal the sick, come true, we all may yet want to end our days in
Forteau.
Flowers Cove has also expanded. A stable, a pony, a new industrial
house, an experimental garden, all suggest progress. Perhaps the best
advance there is the election of twelve select-men to prevent graft in
the use of public money, as well as more wisely to use the allocations
secured from the Government. Nowhere else in the whole of Newfoundland
has that experiment been attempted, and it has received the Government's
warm sanction.
The new dispensary and service rooms at Batteau mean more efficient
work, while the little houses for summer workers at George's Cove and
Boulter's Rock and Seal Islands are indeed small, but so are mosquitoes
and streptococci. Love is invisible as well as blind, and those little
centres are unanswerable sermons.
Of greenhouses, agriculture, industrial additions, education,
volunteers, and orphanages I have already written, and yet there are
many more 'sermons in stones' and 'gospels in running brooks' to record.
The sermons of this Mission, preached in trying by a thousand ways to
put a picture of the work and its needs before the public, are perhaps
less conventional than others, but not one whit less factors in
achieving the end desired, carrying the convincing message of real love
to our neighbours and to God, because delivered in New York or London
and not in the romantic setting of the Labrador. These are the work of
'the man behind,' and of the woman behind him.
Making and selling things for charities is recognized as religious. Why
not enable those who cannot crochet or knit or sew, or even carve or
paint, to help in the way they can? Some folk make music and sell it.
King David made a joyful noise as his contribution many times. Why not
hire the Metropolitan Opera, and throw in Chaliapin and his great
company as well? Would he like to help? Why not? Everyone else did.
Dramatists have souls and hearts as well as doctors and parsons. Madame
Schumann-Heink, Madame Louise Homer, and many another are amongst those
as well known for their helpfulness as Clara Barton or Florence
Nightingale. What would one performance cost? Ten thousand dollars!!!
Far too much to risk on one meeting, I thought. Yet it was entirely
undertaken by volunteers. They are the real heroes of faith. Eight
thousand dollars for Labrador was realized as the result of their united
work. I confess again I was amongst the timorous at first, but our 'most
venturesome' motto, and my confidence in _What Every Woman Knows_ (the
teaching of Barrie's famous play), persuaded me. The opera has been an
annual affair ever since. The making of a film like that of the _Viking_
demanded time, risk, financial outlay, all kinds of special business
knowledge and methods, and it actually cost two lives. The film has
meant more already to others, especially to Labrador, than many lives
ever give for the true purpose of life.
The inestimable help rendered by the clothing store to the Coast has
already been referred to. Till we brought in sheep, all wool was
imported. Naturally it was very expensive, and only too frequently
unprocurable at all by the poor. All our workers love the winter months
better than the summer. But _we_ do not have to face it without
'woollies.' Warm garments are an essential link in the chain of life in
the North, and while 'further down' folk rely entirely on fur and
feathers, we cannot do so. Our clothing problem has been one of the most
difficult to solve rationally.
[Illustration: A LABRADOR NURSE AND HER CHARGES]
[Illustration: FLOWERS COVE NURSING STATION]
Our present system is an infinite advance on that of thirteen years ago.
The new clothing store has become a regular department. As the
Government allows this charity in free of taxation, none may be, or ever
is, sold for cash. It must be given out, for work preferably, freely if
necessary. The head of this department is now on the regular staff, and
in summer has to have at least two volunteers to help. Orders on the
clothing store are given out through regular channels and exchanged on
certain days at the store. Half the cost of living, which must of
necessity be very cheap on our Coast, is clothing. The ability to carry
on this clothing-supply work means development along many lines. All
kinds of public needs for which not one cent is available can be in time
met in this way. On the other hand, the unemployed are thus protected
from doles, and at the same time fitted out for work when it comes
along, and through it all their self-respect is preserved.
A fishing voyage to Labrador not only involves wet and calls for changes
of clothing, but only in warm clothing can the work be done at all,
since it must be done in the atmosphere of the polar current. It may not
be a conventional way of loving your neighbour, but even if money were
available, which it is not, it may yet be regarded as desirable as
payment on a gold standard.
The change in the fisheries since the War, and the falling markets,
together with the removal of much of the fishery outfitting from St.
John's to Catalina, the headquarters of the Fishermen's Union,
diminished greatly the number of outport fishermen frequenting St.
John's, with the result that the patronage of the Seamen's Institute
fell increasingly into the hands of the oversea men, longshoremen, and
seal fishermen, while the women's quarters became almost exclusively for
girls from the outports who came to find work in the city. Increasing
pressure on the Girls' Department, which has always been
self-supporting, induced the directors to give them more of the space,
while the rest of the building, still reserving the rights of the
fishermen to use its privileges, was taken over by the Y.M.C.A. to
afford a home for its splendid activities in the capital. Admirable work
has been carried on.
The town rallied around the Institute, and for some time it did not cost
the budget of the Association anything, even the repairs and taxes all
being carried by the Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A. Only these last two
years, when the total collapse of all our markets not only hit the
fishermen, but nearly also swamped the merchants, and even the
Government of the Colony found it hard to escape bankruptcy, have we
been asked for any financial help.
An active committee at St. John's is carried on still, there never
having been any time when just this very uplift which the Institute
affords has been so sorely needed. Alas, there is need now to renew the
heating system, which in the lapse of years has become uneconomic.
Moreover, increase of expenses has allowed a modest debt to accumulate,
as so many members have been unable to meet their dues. So our directors
have once again decided partially to accept the responsibility for the
budget, but if ever there was a _quid pro quo_ for money invested in
Y.M.C.A. enterprises, it surely is in St. John's at the Institute.
Charles Kingsley was bitterly attacked for saying it was better
Christianity to clear out your neighbour's back yard than to pray to God
to heal him when he is dying from typhoid. Well, that is what our
Y.M.C.A. is teaching. The glory and the challenge of Christ to youth
vanish when creeds and conventions supplant a real cross of some kind.
The old adage about the merciful man being merciful to his beast applies
in Labrador just as surely as it did in Palestine. So much of the joy
and the usefulness of life on the Coast depends on our 'motor power,'
that forward steps for men's welfare there should go pace by pace with
forward steps for the comfort of these his ever-faithful friends.
The fishermen, being often too poor to feed and house themselves
properly, have not treated their dogs as they ought. These fine animals
have been regarded too often as having no feelings. They have suffered
from bad housing, bad feeding, and general lack of care and
affection—which a dog craves every whit as much as a man does. We have
tried to do something to teach kindness to these noble animals. Our
dog-races have become the Blue Ribbon of all our games, and everyone
longs to have the best team. All the many teams entering the competition
are inspected. The owners do not like to be thought to neglect their
dogs; but better still it has been found invariably that those who win
the races are the teams whose masters never use a whip.
Recently, through the insight and kindness of a lover of dogs, a great
advance has been made. This member of the Board of the Animal Rescue
League has built for us a most marvellous and up-to-date kennel, which
not only gives our dogs a comfortable, clean, and 'modern' home, but
serves as an example to the whole Shore of the way dogs should be
treated. At each tide the sea rises into the bottom of the runways and
washes out the kennel. Moreover, on hot summer days the dogs can get
into the water if they wish.
'These Eskimo dogs are vicious brutes,' says one writer. 'When driven by
hunger they will eat the unwary driver.' To-day I have just read in the
last number of the magazine of the quite unvicious Royal Geographical
Society, 'To-day we had to kill one of our faithful dogs for food. We
had only three left when we got home.'
The newly arrived Christian Viking on the Labrador tells us that he
found nine natives sleeping under boats. He pulled them out, and,
finding that they could not speak his language, he killed them. The
Christian world has ever since calmly classed the Eskimos as ferocious
savages, because when the next comer arrived, a Christian missionary,
speaking German, the poor creatures returned the compliment.
If you are anxious to do for your neighbour what you know he would do
for you, what blame attaches to you if you do it first? Thus, on one
occasion, arriving after a long, hard day at a patient's lonely house, I
found him too ill to come out, and discovered that he had made no
provision for feeding my dogs, who are never fed till night. After fifty
miles hauling a heavy sledge, at twenty below zero, with no breakfast,
concessions must be extended even to the Christian stomach. My host
begged me if I had any 'vicious' dogs to shut them up in an outhouse, as
he owned a sheep. I had a perfect gem of a dog called Kite, purchased
near Cape Chidley. He weighed eighty pounds, and later he helped to save
my life. He was not more vicious than I was, but I thought it would be
well to shut him up—his appetite was so robust. It was sunny in the
morning. My host felt better and came out to see me off. He saw me going
to the outhouse to release my friend.
'Don't open that door!'he cried. 'My sheep is in there!' I had to go in,
however, but I could not find the sheep. Kite lay smiling on a wisp of
hay. I had to leave him behind. He could not walk. He weighed over a
hundred pounds. He had 'taken that stranger in.' He was not a bit
vicious!
It would be immodest for me to claim that possibly the most far-reaching
of all our new ventures in usefulness has been my Discretionary Fund.
Anyway, here is its _apologia pro vita_:
'Cold as charity this morning!' said the house surgeon one day, snapping
his fingers.
'There's the thermometer, exactly ten degrees warmer than yesterday. It
is only just zero,' I answered.
'Feels colder, anyhow,' he replied. 'I guess we shall be colder at
Christmas.'
'No one here is ever cold now at Christmas, thank God.'
'Then why does everybody say "cold as charity" and mean it?' he asked.
'Why, when a great country like America has most of the gold in the
world, can it be facing a financial crisis?' I retorted. 'How can its
assets be frozen? Was not Scrooge and Marley's world frozen until the
touch of Tiny Tim thawed it?
'Charity run by mathematics or by logic will always be a dole and little
more. What is love, anyhow, without personality? The very daily papers
now show that finance, politics, and current science are learning slowly
a little about the rigid limitations of mere facts and figures. Here
again in life is an unaccounted for "H factor" of the quantum theory.
That is why all advanced minds to-day admit that the materialism of the
last century failed. Even those who do not yet admit it, in any and
every field of real work are bound to work as if they did, if they want
to get anywhere. So it is that the working of this invaluable fund has
encouraged all our efforts by the visible results.
'Here is an excellent example right under our noses. We met Dick Field
first by chance. The _Strathcona_ had broken down, and I was cruising
along ahead alone in the jolly-boat, and sought shelter at night at a
little house of which I saw the smoke on the end of the promontory south
of Sandy Bay. There were Dick and his wife and six youngsters in the
shack, and that was practically all except a trifle of dry flour, the
bones of a sea-gull, and at night not one blanket or one bit of
bed-covering among the lot. I slept on the floor in my bag, with nose to
the crack under the door for air. The family had to give up ventilation
to keep warm.
'Instead of giving a dole and passing on, even in so dire a plight I
made Dick give me the pelt of a silver fox he had, and traded it for him
farther down the Coast. That skin actually afforded that family an
entire winter's diet. Beyond a few garments, we gave nothing, except
absolute orders to put every pelt he got into a barrel and sit on it if
anyone came to buy them. He followed that plan to the end of his life.
During those last years, he built a cottage in Adlavik Islands for the
summer fishing, became independent, and, when he joined his ancestors,
left me three hundred dollars in cash to use for the benefit of his
family. But it was the Discretionary Fund which made this possible, a
fund the point of which is that the sanity of any venture upon which it
was spent was left to an individual.'
'Go on,' said the house surgeon. 'Let's have another.'
'You know John Doe? Fine fellow, isn't he? Absolutely honest, and you
know the work the whole family, including the girls, put in to meet
their account when first they lost their boat in that bad storm, and
this year again when their fish is of no value. Mrs. Doe gave me
eighty-three as fine grass baskets as ever were made. When you remember
that she had to gather the grass herself and to manage for that family,
including making the clothing from rags almost like patchwork quilts,
and keep the house warm with her husband away on the fur path, and cook
so as to eke out the supplies, besides protect the larder, you cannot
help taking off your hat to her. The fact is, you cannot help that same
unknown "H factor" inside your scientific soul enjoying the personal
challenge to help out.
'It was at the Holy Islands I first met them. They were sharing a tilt
with George Topler and his four. A more woe-begone problem I never
faced. I still have the list of "assets"—adults four, children nine. No
home, no boat, no money, two ancient muzzle-loading guns, equally
dangerous at either end. Wardrobe, nil. One kitchen stove—an ancient
wreck left by the last occupant of the shack they were sheltering in. No
fishing-stage. No need for trunks—such clothing as they owned was every
stitch in service, even in summer. Fox-traps, about half a dozen,
remnants. Fish, seized for debt. Gun-powder and shot, nil. Government
charity—a small supply of flour, tea, and molasses, but not enough to
keep body and soul together, much less to fit for hard work. Prospects,
nil, except almost certainly beri-beri in spring—a painful paralytic
disease due to food deficiency. These two families had just migrated
north in search of better hunting grounds.
'A week later, fortune threw me right into the arms of the very man who
had owned the old house, stage, and stove, into which these wanderers
had walked. He was a genial Irishman. His family had all departed and
left him alone in the world. His small schooner had conveniently sunk at
the wharf and had been insured fully. No one quite knew the exact cause
of her demise, except as he himself suggested, "It was about time she
went, after me paying insurance on her for all them years, sir, and me
giving up the fishery too. Yes, the water's very deep there."
'"You did not use any unlawful means to save her, I hope,
Paddy—because, you see, I'm a magistrate?"
'"'Deed I didn't"—and I thought I detected a twinkle in his eye as he
said it. "The little darling's gone, though—God bless her," he added,
with almost a real sigh of regret. What would an Irishman be without the
"H factor," and a large one at that?
'Anyhow, he let me buy out all his interests for a paltry thirty
dollars, and gave me a quittance with his blessing. That began it. What
a pleasure it has been to watch those families pull themselves up!
'Everyone likes rearing rabbits or white rats. These human beings could
never have accomplished what they did on charity. They felt some person
cared for them as individuals, and it made all the difference in the
world.
'Each year as I pass the Islands I think of that old "schedule of
assets" and wonder whether any charity need really be cold, even in
Labrador.'
In 1930 a winter gale lost them their only fishing boat. This fund once
more brought hope to them by an advance for a new boat.
In very few works like ours have I known a Discretionary Fund lodged in
the hands of the workers on the spot; though in reality far greater
responsibilities are allotted them. It would seem that our real faith,
even in our representatives, does not often go quite so far as trusting
them with money to give away. In endless cases this personal 'vitamin'
is as lacking in organized charity as is a life-giving vitamin from the
best white loaf. Boards of directors never quite like Discretionary
Funds. It certainly increases their worries. Yet that is exactly what
God supplies each of us with—infinite responsibility—and we regard
that as the best thing in life. The trouble with the dole is that it
lacks that very vitamin, and sooner or later it leads to paralysis.
I would close this with one more example of how a Discretionary Fund
works. A friend, reading in our magazine the story of Uncle George, left
a small sum in her will to be used for his benefit. Until his death it
was most carefully handled. He never wanted for anything wherewith to
enable him to live. When he lost his big boat we advanced him another.
When he lacked anything we saw that he got it. He passed away recently,
unspoilt and independent. He left no money for his family, but he had
still the same superb confidence that God would stand by them also as He
had by himself. We know, of course, that this help will be conveyed
through human hands. All such things are. The gift is doubly blest,
however, for it is a great encouragement to us to be able, now both
these friends are gone, still to carry out exactly what I cannot help
feeling the donor somehow watches with pleasure, if, as seems possible,
those ahead of us can look back. A special treasurer in Boston receives,
nurses, and disburses the actual cash. The man-in-the-field directs the
tactics.
CHAPTER XXII
'THE GOOD EARTH'
A careful review of efforts to make the land yield us its increase
revealed how purely predatory our Labrador people still were. They had
treated Labrador as if it were a South Sea island, where man is able to
live by grabbing breadfruit and yams supplied ready-made by Mother
Nature. Labrador was just a drain, like the lake on the hill-top at
Harrington from which the hospital drew its supply and never troubled to
see that any more water ran into it. For centuries, since predatory
explorers first visited America, native races and Nature's gifts have
been increasingly exploited and depleted.
A review of our natural assets showed how many more we possessed than
some countries which for centuries have supported populations infinitely
larger than ours in reasonable comfort. Even in the sunny Riviera, if it
were not for the terraced cliff-sides made with endless labour, where
would be Italy's grapes, and olives, and fruits? Where would Holland be
without its man-built, closely guarded dykes, and its never-ceasing
pumps? Even there man must now reclaim the sunken Zuyder Zee to supply
from its bottom the needs of their people. Why do the Chinese still die
by millions in famines? Because they have used their trees for fuel and
never reforested, and because of the terrible floods of their
uncontrolled rivers. The control by man of great rivers like the Ohio
has ended the same woes in America, and the British Raj alone has
averted the old periodic famines in India.
Convention regards hospitals as religious propaganda; but so are
cemeteries and crematories! Surely provision for food should be
considered as more essential than either. Our Labrador work entered on a
new era when, with expert help and some hard work, we began to speed
production by starting farming in the North. Moreover, fifty years ago,
who would have conceived that the part of Labrador which we were willing
to forget as being 'north of Scotland' could be an invaluable
way-station on the route of travel from Europe to America; yet all
thoughtful people are to-day regarding the Greenland-Labrador airway as
the coming route for rapid and safe transport. Alas for the pettiness of
our little minds!
In Labrador in the past we had always worked on the axiom that 'back to
the land' simply meant 'face to the sea.' Looking over this book to see
what was our former attitude toward farming, to my dismay I found the
matter disposed of in the laconic heading of the professional who made
the index. The very first entry read, 'Agriculture in Labrador
unsuccessful.'
Now we know that it was we who were unsuccessful, just as were the
Cabots and the Cartiers and the Cortereals who stood looking at the
country and declared it was 'all of no use,' which should read 'nothing
ready for us to grab.' For years we had been satisfied to say, 'The
season for growing is too short.' It took desperation to engender enough
faith to reply, 'Very well, then, we will make it longer.' If the ground
is frozen until July, seeds placed in it then naturally will not
germinate until too late for the vegetables to mature. Friends in
Greenwich, Connecticut, presented us with a greenhouse. By July of the
year following we had plantlets fully three months old, ready to go into
the ground. That autumn, when the fishermen saw cabbages weighing even
up to eighteen pounds in our gardens, they wanted them, and the next
year we sold fifteen thousand plantlets to local families along one
section of the Coast. Now we sell every little plant which we can spare
of those we raise in our available space. We have added a second and a
third larger greenhouse given us by the Garden Clubs of America. To-day
all around that North Shore our fame is bruited, or, as the people say,
'fruited,' in increasing thousands of young plants.
Other discouragements have been fought one by one. The cabbage and
turnip seed which were purchased at considerable cost, though tended
with truly motherly care, frequently failed. The young plants often
withered in the garden plots soon after the first leaves broke the
ground. Endless white lice destroyed the Petrowski turnips, which had
come all the way from Alaska; and every variety of plant, even the
homely potatoes, were found to have enemies 'lying in wait to devour
them.'
Our chief problem was to know how to destroy the pests. This time we
found our salvation at the Massachusetts State College of Agriculture at
Amherst, whence one of their professors has come at his own expense and
taught us the effective remedies, and year by year inspects our
agricultural efforts and suggests progressive steps. In order to make
the carrying-out of such expert help permanent, we have had three of our
Northern boys educated in agricultural colleges.
Another greenhouse has been erected at North-West River, where 'our
professor' assures us that far the widest range of possibilities awaits
our experiments. In just this locality, three-quarters of a century ago,
our good friend the late Lord Strathcona grew all the vegetables needed
for his station. The result was that he never had much sympathy for
Labrador sufferers from diseases due to vegetable deficiency.
The unanimity of opinion of my medical colleagues on this branch of our
work, and at St. Anthony the real genius of James Tucker, the student
whom we sent to Truro, leave one deeply regretful that we did not years
ago divert even some of our hospital resources for the development of
the agricultural department. Its progress to-day is showing us clearly
that such efforts of previous settlers were, like much faith in God,
destroyed by the burden of endless little discouragements rather than by
being blown up or frozen. One year, when there was practically no income
from the fisheries, and when the families must have starved or lived on
doles—when they could be obtained—our chief paean of joy was that the
gardens under cultivation had increased thirty per cent. As a result,
many of our people, instead of standing idle all day long like the
bread-lines of other countries, are employed in clearing and preparing
ground for the coming years. Reliable seed must be put within their
reach. Loans of farming tools are still necessary, as are means to
destroy pests. Glass for frames is urgently required in each settlement.
The value of trees to hold snow and to afford shelter from wind,
moreover, is being learned through agricultural efforts, whereas harbour
laws, jail sentences, and even sermons, all of which we tried, failed to
inculcate it. As a result, the uplifting value of beauty around the
homes and villages may yet be restored. Unintelligent vandalism has done
us incalculable harm.
We had made repeated efforts to develop the use of our local peat. We
cut it and dried it and burned it in our own home. We bought up every
booklet on the subject which we could find. We even preached about it.
Everybody said it was splendid, but nobody burned it. We are told in
Holy Writ that no man can give another spiritual faith; but we failed to
secure adherents even to material peat. One and all, including our Irish
neighbours, scouted it. One step forward in this effort began when we
were driving through Bavaria, and noticed a long line of what appeared
to be soldiers marching in single file across the horizon. When we came
up to them, they proved to be strong, thin poles, each of which had been
speared through a dozen briquettes of peat and then stuck into the
ground, thus enabling it to dry quickly in the wind and sun, and to some
extent to shed the rain. A second step was taken when a number of men,
who were paying fees in labour, together with a gang of 'wops,' some of
whom were waiting to proceed to one of our other stations, put a fine
road right through to a big peat bog at St. Anthony. We made a third
step when we discovered that peat, mixed with the heads and bones and
offal of codfish, with kelp and seaweed, made an invaluable compost for
gardens; and that land from which peat was removed became pasture land.
To-day we are thrilled with the news of a yet greater future. Among the
poor but home-loving Scotchmen who go out apparently to supply a steady
demand for presidents of banks and other business corporations in the
United States and Canada, one has given expression to that love by
erecting at his old home a fine agricultural institute. As peat is the
largest unused potential immediately accessible in the neighbourhood,
much experimentation has been done with it. The irony of the new
discoveries is the suggestion that now peat bogs can be made so
remunerative, owing to their agricultural capacities and at such
reasonable expense, that the Highlanders will no longer have to leave
their glens, and there may be a depression in the export of Scotch
presidents of banks!
Every cent which we can spare is now being devoted to extend the
agricultural department at each of our centres. For though our own
schooner, the _George B. Cluett_, brought potatoes and vegetables from
Prince Edward Island this autumn at half the price of most years, what
use is that if the fishermen cannot sell their fish, if their fur no
longer pays to catch it, and if their pulpwood is too cheap to pay to
cut it?
This year we offered some small advances in the spring to purchase seed
and tools, and some to fishermen who would otherwise have been unable to
get sea-boots or even hooks and lines, much less canvas for sails and
fuel or paint for motor boats. The tiny agricultural loans were all
repaid, but, as the fishermen could pay nothing in cash, they worked out
the loans on the new gardens of the nearest nursing station, under the
direction of the nurse. One man, who had had no chance to fit out for
the fishery, was spending all summer on his gardens. In the autumn, this
man had sixty barrels of potatoes and more than a sufficiency of turnips
and cabbages. Such practical advice and simple remedies for the cutworm
and cabbage caterpillar as Professor Sears was able to give not only
turned the scale in many gardens and provided food where otherwise none
would have been this winter, but he was thus able to arouse from
discouragement those who had abandoned hope. What better holiday could
any professor of agriculture hope for? It is not time yet to judge what
potential we have, but we have grown fine alfalfa (Grims), made a good
start with white artichokes which are perennial, and have even ripened
pumpkins at St. Anthony.
Animal husbandry has made steady progress, chiefly because the dog
problem has been solved _vi et armis_. Dogs must now be shut up in
summer, and, if found loose, may be destroyed. This is certainly hard on
our dogs, but there is no alternative. We have had to help some poorer
neighbours out with wire and even nails for proper dog-pens, for the
dogs are otherwise kept in far too small kennels. To try and set an
example of what we owe to dogs, and to encourage kindness to all
animals, a friend from Maine offered us his help in the form of
beautiful new headquarters kennels at St. Anthony. These give shelter to
the dogs always in winter at night if they desire it, and in summer
allow the sea to rise and fall in half their runways so that the dogs
can keep themselves just as clean as ever they like. Example does what
no precept will, and we could devise no surer method of improving the
accommodations for and care of dogs along the Coast. We have tried to
cross our huskies several times with milder-tempered dogs, such as
wolf-hounds, Chesapeakes, and old English sheep-dogs, so as to lessen
the danger to cattle, but so far we have never had good results. In
Greenland, the dogs are smaller than ours. They are also subject to a
tapeworm disease, dangerous to man, from which ours are free. We
therefore destroyed some kindly brought to us by Dr. Cook.
Cows have increased considerably, and our thoroughbreds have spread
their strain all around our North Coast. At Flowers Cove this year
Parson Richards, to save the valuable and much-needed cream, on the day
his calf was born removed it from the cow, separated all the cream from
the milk, substituted two tablespoons of cod-liver oil at each feeding,
and in the autumn had far the finest calf in the village.
Our Duroc Jersey pigs have been eminently successful, both in clearing
land and producing pork. The black-faced sheep imported from Scotland
have shown their ability to eat almost any of the ordinary wild plants
which cover our terrain before it is cultivated. They were sent us
because they are one of the very few sheep which can be fattened on
heather.
We are now raising large rabbits, while the Hudson's Bay Company is
breeding both foxes and mink in Sandwich Bay. Young foxes cannot thrive
on an entirely fish diet, and we are hoping the young rabbits may step
into the breach. In old days, it was found necessary to pass a law that
servants and apprentices might not be fed salmon more than four times a
week.
We have also made an attempt to introduce bees. Several lots came by
mail, hatching out just after arrival. Our people never having seen any
except wild bumble-bees, which are very rare, were much disturbed at
first as to 'who was going to bring the food to the bees every day.' At
first, the bees did well, and stored a good many pounds of honey.
Unfortunately, however, no one understood them, and we failed to notice
they were eating their store before winter came, only finding that out
when the bees perished. They were seen collecting honey over the
hill-tops in a harbour as far as three miles away (evidently being short
of the flowers they needed). We are delighted that a bee expert has
offered to come down for his summer holidays and give such protagonists
of labour another chance. It seems plain, however, that, with honey at
less than six cents a pound by the barrel, it will not pay to feed bees
through our winter, and that their devotion can only be rewarded by
death in the autumn; and new bees brought by post each spring. _Sic
transit gloria mundi_.
Another very promising experiment was also tried out recently with great
success. An expert on food preservation came north for the summer,
dividing her time between St. Anthony and Cartwright. The fishermen's
wives were invited to bring salmon, fresh from their husbands' nets, to
classes held in our schoolrooms, and were then taught the whole process
of canning fish and local berries. Our steam cooker allowed only six
students to 'cook their cans' at once. At first, conservatism held the
women back, but very soon there was the keenest competition when it was
discovered that including the container a pound can of fat fresh salmon
could be preserved for winter at three cents per tin and the can could
be used three times over. The season ended with many good pounds of
salmon and fine berries stored away in many homes, where the high fat
and proteid content will be exceedingly valuable this winter. Another
outcome was that one of our own local girls was sent to Massachusetts
State College, in order to learn the valuable art of food preservation.
We hope this will result in the beginning of a really large movement.
For this year all we could get for these magnificent salmon was two
cents per pound when they were fit for instantaneous freezing, and much
less than that on an average when the fishermen have to cure, salt, and
barrel them.
One of our most beloved girl volunteers was responsible for yet another
effort in animal husbandry. Miss Marion Moseley, of Chicago, undertook
to start regular child welfare work. To accomplish that, fresh milk was
essential. Her slogans were 'Goats in every village!'—'Goats, the only
machine to turn Labrador rocks into milk!'—'Goats, the greatest mothers
in the world!' The spring following, news reached us from Chicago of the
gift of eight goats, the most highly bred milk-producers in the goat
world, worth something like five hundred dollars apiece. Simultaneously
came the news that the goats would be freighted down to us by rail and
ship. We had had little experience with goats, but a good deal with
local freights, and we at once entered our protest. Thrilled with
gratitude for these noble gifts, we dreaded the criticism which would
surely follow if any 'fell by the wayside.' We broadcast an S O S to say
that, if strangers had made such sacrifices for Labrador's sake, would
not someone risk perhaps even more in the same spirit, and personally
conduct these baby missionaries to their fields of operation? The answer
is still recorded in pictorial form in my sanctum sanctorum. It is a
large rotogravure from the _New York Times_ Sunday illustrated edition.
Underneath is the legend, 'The Labrador Goat Brigade Leaves for the
North.' It portrays eight beautiful girls, each accompanied by a
beautiful goat, and all seated on the deck of a steamer. Incidentally,
it was a timely compliment to the 'spirit of Illinois,' for just then
the records of gangster operations in their largest city were earning it
a very different reputation. These Toggenburgs and Anglo-Nubians thrived
well, but gave us much trouble with local gardens which are never too
well fenced in. One local sage 'reckoned them goats was too high bred
anyhow.' So at our own stations cows have replaced goats, but 'in spots'
goats are still apostles of Miss Moseley's unassailable gospel of milk,
and are preaching love to their neighbours perhaps as eloquently as
would homilies or erudite sermons. We are convinced that if one
hundredth part of the money expended in relief to able-bodied men were
expended, not only in the North, but everywhere, in animal and vegetable
adaptation and development, every country in the world would be better
off.
Amongst the many much-neglected assets of Labrador has been its regular
immense crop of various kinds of wild berries. The Hudson's Bay Company
has exported large quantities of blueberries to America. Experiments
have shown that through cultivation these blueberries can be enlarged to
the size of small grapes. There are five varieties of blueberries in
Newfoundland. One especially, the 'Pennsylvanicus,' is very sweet and
grows on a large stem, so that the berries are easily picked. As
blueberries thrive only on acid soils and stand almost any amount of
cold, our country is ideal for their culture. Probably the same is true
of our endless cranberries, yellow bake-apples, and red currants.
Farther to the southward in Newfoundland, wild raspberries are
extraordinarily numerous. Everywhere in the woods the tiny but
deliciously flavoured little white capillair berries abound. Experience
has left no doubt whatever in our minds that experiment, work, and
venture can make our grossly misrepresented land products as valuable as
our rich sea harvests will one day again become.
Meanwhile, higher and higher barriers are raised in the name of
nationalism against even the importation of those very things for lack
of which hunger and poverty are being suffered. Duties against these
very berries, just as against the highly valuable fish, prevent them
from reaching their natural markets even in their own continent.
Barriers between man and man can never benefit the world or any section
of it. Meanwhile, those responsible do not realize that they are their
own victims. Instead, they consider such policies patriotism.
Bolshevism, because 'international' and modified, does not become
Christian. It is still born of fear and folly.
As for the harvest of the air, that too needs only the same rational
treatment. Our ducks, geese, and wild birds, and even their eggs
properly taken care of, can be made to go a very long way toward
affording an ample living to many thousands of people.
On a lecture tour a few months ago, as we drove through the black
country in England, through the environs of Glasgow, and later through
South Wales, one of the saddest sights on earth greeted us—English,
Scotch, and Welsh men with nothing to do! There was no drunkenness, no
rioting, even good-humour and courtesy, all of which made only more
terrible the hopeless idleness. To-day's papers, the first day of a new
year, report that twelve million are out of work in America, and one
hundred and fifty thousand children are being fed on charity in
Philadelphia. Yet America has three-quarters of the gold on earth, and
the Western States are not irrigating new lands. The fault seems to lie
in the faulty and restricted distribution of the food which the world
needs rather than in overproduction. Bananas are being burned by the
hundreds of tons. Endless sacks of coffee are being dumped. Even wheat
is being burned. Cotton, copper, rubber, beef, fish, and numberless
other necessities are entirely lacking in one place and in useless
abundance in others. The final word of wisdom cannot be to raise more
tariff walls which will only still further impede circulation. When we
left Labrador last autumn, fish was lying unsold in countless tons and
the people were without flour. A week later in New York tens of
thousands of men were in bread-lines and needed fish, while wheat was
rotting in the near-by granaries and legislatures were increasing
'Protection' as a cure-all for the trouble.
CHAPTER XXIII
AESCULAPIUS
IF a clam stirs in the mud, it is probable that some other clam is
affected, objects, and criticizes. Criticism is a sign of activity. It
is the presumptive evidence of life. The very words 'Medical Missionary'
to-day irritate some people as connoting to them a claim to motives
superior to those of the practitioner who must live by his fees.
In Labrador it has become the custom for all our medical officers to
meet once a year to discuss progress. On one occasion, amongst other
criticisms of the year which we discussed, was a report of the first
annual meeting of Newfoundland doctors held in St. John's, which none of
us had been able to attend. The chairman had stated there were no
hospitals outside the capital. This we considered scarcely fair. Our
records showed many patients who had paid their fare north from St.
John's itself, in order to come to St. Anthony for treatment. Moreover,
we knew that our hospitals at Battle Harbour, Indian Harbour, and
North-West River at least deserved recognition. We therefore decided to
ask the College of Surgeons of America to send a representative from
their committee for standardizing hospitals, to inspect St. Anthony and
Twillingate, hardly daring to hope that they would do so. We made
Twillingate Hospital possible by raising most of the money; but far more
important, we had the whole staff appointed from our own workers.
Although history shows that the mere multiplication of medical and
surgical machinery has not necessarily marked the most efficient eras
for the protection of public health, nevertheless modern medical
science, so far as Art can aid Nature to heal, has every right to assume
that the great centres of civilization have an advantage over the
outposts, and that the certificate of the value of a body which
represents a nation's leaders in a particular science is of real
importance.
It was a great encouragement when both St. Anthony and Twillingate
hospitals received their grades as A1 institutions for healing, if only
because it meant that we were giving our neighbours the kind of
treatment which would spell a message of real love if given to us. There
was also enough of the old Adam left in us to make us smile when we
learned that we were the only hospitals in the Colony that had been
granted the coveted honour.
One central hospital would have been the least expensive way to carry on
our work on the Coast, but utterly inefficient under our present
conditions of transportation. We had now decided that the five
hospitals, located on an average of one hundred and fifty miles apart,
were as close together as we could provide medical and surgical help at
a cost within our means, even though there were still no roads in our
end of the country and aeroplanes were not yet considered practical.
However, we could provide for maternity cases and emergencies by placing
nursing units between each two hospitals. Forteau Station had proved an
undeniable success. It had saved many lives, and many anxious times for
us doctors. Once at Flowers Cove, when I was passing through on
snow-shoes late in May, when the rivers were open and dog-teams no
longer available, a young man was brought to me with his leg shot to
pieces by his gun, which had gone off in the boat. I had controlled the
bleeding with needle and thread from his mother's sewing-box and
amputated the limb with my pocket knife, as I had with me only what I
stood up in. After three days, it seemed that the lad had a fair chance
for recovery. As it was imperative for me to proceed on my journey at
once, a picked crew ventured through the running ice, which was still
blocking the Straits of Belle Isle, and carried my patient comfortably
across in a fishing boat to the door of the nursing station at Forteau,
where unquestionably his life was saved by our nurse.
The case of a man who had shot his arm off in midwinter, that of a
six-year-old boy who had drunk boiling water from a kettle on the stove,
several maternity cases, all of whom owe their lives to Forteau, cannot
be forgotten; but far beyond that is the routine but splendid constant
prophylactic service which a nursing station affords. So when the chance
came, a nursing centre was built at Flowers Cove, on the Newfoundland
side of the Straits, to take care of the western north coast. This
station, with its nurse and industrial worker, has now a very large
range of work. Labour in return for help given in emergencies has
enabled the nurse there to begin an experimental garden and pasture,
while we shall soon see these devoted workers with at least one pony. A
ten-mile walk for that nurse to a case is by no means rare, and many
rounds have to be done in stages. One day this autumn we called at this
station. The ladies did not return until late at night, each having
covered on foot some twenty miles already that day.
Later, another nursing unit was built at Mutton Bay, in order to divide
the distance between Harrington and Forteau, which is impassable in
winter. As years went by, a small winter centre for the Battle Hospital
staff was built at Hatter's Cove, in St. Louis Bay; and a nurse was
placed at Conche, between Twillingate and St. Anthony. Her services were
made possible to the fishermen by the generosity of one of our volunteer
workers who had herself seen conditions in winter, and by the poor
people themselves, who guaranteed her board, lodging, and
transportation. A permanent nurse is now stationed at Cartwright and one
at Batteau each summer. In summer also, nursing aides are placed in
other small centres.
This is no place for a panegyric on nurses. I wish I had the pen of a
Tennyson to portray efficiently all we owe them. Even then one could not
do them justice. The best testimonial I have to offer has been my
recurrent appeals to them to come and help. It requires poetry, it seems
to me, adequately to describe that spiritual element in healing and in
bringing comfort which these highly trained nurses, with a vision of the
Christ, carry with them. God knows men have carried sacrificial love
almost to the limit, but how crude their hands have seemed in
comparison, how rough and inadequate their best efforts, how material
and hard the presentation! There have often been occasions when,
watching our nurses at work on this resentful Coast, we felt that the
very devils themselves must cry out as they did in His days on earth
when they saw the Master at work. We try never to leave them alone at
their posts, and the admirable combination of a trained industrial
teacher and social worker living with them has seemed to us the
duplication in these prosaic days of the sending out of the Apostles two
by two, to be also achieving similar ends.
Go and stay in one of these nursing stations at Christmas time if you
have any doubts on this matter. You may not find central heating or
running water or modern plumbing, and few indeed of the physical frills
of life which our civilization has made necessities for us. But you will
find a quality which the materialism of to-day may still call
negligible, but which goes on 'turning water into wine, and the wooden
cup to gold.'
Ironically enough, the very destructibility of the material which we
have had to use for building during these years has been a great source
of trouble. The Emily Beaver Chamberlain Hospital at North-West River
was destroyed by fire. The Gordon School and Orphanage at Muddy Bay were
burned, and the parsonage at Cartwright. Later, our first hospital and
buildings at Battle Harbour, which for over thirty-eight years had
served the Coast so well, followed suit. Through the generosity of
friends, each of these has been replaced. At North-West River a far more
efficient hospital now carries on the work, the Gordon School and
Children's Home has been replaced by the larger Lockwood
Boarding-School, the centre of the new settlement growing up at
Cartwright; while Battle Harbour settlement has been moved up St. Louis
Bay to the mouth of St. Mary's River, where also a boarding-school,
nursing station, and summer hospital now are at work. We decided to
abandon Hatter's Cove nursing station, as all the people had moved away.
The work at Harrington has increased also. A new boat has been built
there for the use of that station, and electric light and an X-ray plant
installed. The Government has given a new stone pier and a water-supply.
The doctor in charge has been made a Justice of the Peace and Government
Agent for the Indians.
The new station at Cartwright is already functioning. The doctor in
charge divides his time between Cartwright, the new 'Battle Harbour at
St. Mary's River,' and the coast villages between. At Spotted Islands
and Batteau he has small summer dispensaries run by volunteers; and
industrial centres at Boulter's Rock, Seal Islands, and George's Cove.
The station also boasts a new boat.
To our farthest-flung northern centre a new and very efficient motor
ship has been added—the _Maraval_, the gift of a friend in New York.
The _Maraval_ is a beautiful and powerful motor-driven vessel, with
considerable carrying capacity. She is excellent in a seaway. She has
helped greatly to solve the problems of that district, now that the fall
in fish values has so crippled the large fleet of fishing schooners, for
whose benefit the hospital at Indian Harbour was originally built. Like
the _Strathcona_, she is ever filled with anything from school children
to agricultural supplies, if not too busy with patients. She broke down,
however, this summer, was towed fifty miles to cross our pathway by the
mail steamer, when we in the _Strathcona_ had the fun of pulling her by
the nose for many miles to our own new dry-dock at St. Anthony. Dr.
Harry Paddon and his wife are the motive powers behind this station at
North-West River. I am often told that this station and its work are the
most beautiful and appealing of all. The whole entourage is utterly
unlike the outside coast.
To extend the chain of hospitals farther northward, the Hudson's Bay
Company, at their own expense, has erected a beautiful little nursing
station at Nain, thus endorsing our views that, in the conditions of
life existing on the Labrador, no other satisfactory policy is possible.
One of the most important achievements has been Twillingate Hospital.
For years the only general hospital in Newfoundland for the benefit of
the whole country and its widely scattered poor people was the
Government hospital at St. John's, in the extreme south of the island.
Transportation alone formed an insuperable barrier to its efficiency.
Lives were unnecessarily lost and endless suffering caused even in
reaching our St. Anthony Hospital from the great Notre Dame Bay, only a
hundred miles to the southward of us. In winter, sufferers in that
district could not reach St. Anthony to the north or St. John's to the
south. We had learned only too painfully that no doctor could give the
service he knew was required unless he had some centre to which to bring
his patients. Moreover, skilled nurses and more or less expensive
equipment were imperative.
Year after year I had visited Twillingate, the main centre of the
fishery in that district, in the hope of somehow helping them to obtain
a modern medical centre in their time of need. The local doctor, the
leading merchants, and especially the fishermen, were all eager about
it. For years no progress was possible. The central Government would not
listen to the plea for a hospital grant. No wonder we felt aggrieved
that, while one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was spent on one road
'de luxe' at the capital, Notre Dame Bay could get no allocation for
even a cottage hospital.
Again I had secured volunteer help for that district. Dr. Hugh Greeley,
now Professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, and Dr.
Harrison Webster, marshal of his class at Harvard, and subsequently
killed in the Great War, came north. Largely with their own hands they
adapted the old staff house of a disused copper mine at Pilley's Island
and started a hospital there. A Government grant of two thousand dollars
a year, even with what patients could afford, left so large an annual
deficit that it was essential to have volunteer nurses. For years this
little hospital filled a great need, but it was utterly inadequate
really to meet the demands of so large and so scattered a clientele.
One day, as the fortnightly mail steamer was landing its quota of
patients at St. Anthony, my attention was especially called to one of
the number. He was an elderly, white-haired seaman, with a strikingly
beautiful and resigned face, but evidently suffering great agony. He
told us he had waited patiently and long for the first steamer to push
north through the ice in spring, and he had evidently been tenderly
cared for. The voyage, however, had been greatly protracted by
ice-fields packed against the cliffs by the onshore wind, and there had
been no skilled help available on board. I went ahead to the hospital to
make sure there should not be a moment's delay, but before the
hand-borne stretcher reached the door the grim struggle had been
lost—and won. I decided then and there that Notre Dame Bay should have
a hospital if it could be done.
Shortly afterward, I received in New York a gift of twenty-five thousand
dollars toward 'hospital work on our Coast.' It was decided at once to
allocate it for Twillingate. Our directors decided that they could not
assume the upkeep of another large hospital. With this sum behind them,
however, the local committee were able to secure a promise from the
Government of ten thousand dollars per year for maintenance. At that
time, Dr. Charles Parsons, who off and on for several years had been on
our staff, and who was a Gold Medallist in surgery and senior graduate
of the famous Johns Hopkins Hospital, volunteered to assume full
responsibility for this new venture. From that day to this he has made
steady progress. The pressure from increasing numbers of patients became
so great that a further grant of fifty thousand dollars was made by our
good friend in New York. This enabled a new large wing to be opened.
Though it has been necessary to treble the original annual grant of the
Government, Dr. Parsons's outstanding abilities as a man of common sense
and business acumen have enabled small committees in every neighbouring
hamlet and cove from which patients come to supplement from their small
means enough to keep that hospital out of debt.
I saw the face of my patient who died on our wharf for only a minute,
but I am certain he is content now, even with the price he had to pay
for being a link in this chain.
The training of many local nurses in the Twillingate district has been
an infinite boon to many lives, while the indirect value of the hospital
to the financial conditions of the people of the Bay is beyond
conception. Thanks to the leadership of Dr. Parsons, this work has been
carried on without cost or responsibility to the International Grenfell
Association.
There is always a risk in human affairs that the real objective of an
enterprise will get lost in the details; as when a most devoted
clergyman refused to proceed with a wedding service until two tiny
bridesmaids had been removed from the church because they had no hats
on.
It might, therefore, be well, at the risk of redundancy, to say that,
while as a doctor one knows that men are born neither free nor equal,
the aim of this effort is to interpret the Christian Gospel by helping
in His name less privileged neighbours to become both, in the truest
sense.
While I frankly accept that by no other way than by loving your
neighbour as yourself can this be done, and freely admit that that is
the most difficult thing on earth to do wisely, a doctor of medicine
expresses his love for his neighbour by crossing the road to attend to
his physical wounds rather than by hurrying to Jerusalem to say prayers
for his benefit.
In this chapter one has tried to touch on some of the signs of
continuing life in that department of the services by which we think we
are still seeing new men being made out of old, as we undoubtedly are
seeing children with better physical bodies growing up around us. The
blind are made to see, the physically lame to walk, the materially naked
clothed, and the materially hungry fed, and that, either entirely freely
or else, better still, at a cost within a reasonable reach of the
'wounded neighbour.'
We have always tried to secure eminent specialists in particular
branches of medicine. Doubtless it was completely illogical to suppose
that these hard-worked men, who could earn large fees by staying home,
should come to Labrador for any 'silly' emotional reasons, and pay all
their own expenses just to help a few fishermen.
We asked them, however, and they came—from California, from Boston,
from Philadelphia, from Cincinnati, from England, and from Canada. Eye
specialists, lung specialists, orthopaedic specialists, nose and throat
specialists, dental surgeons—an array of knights whose lives and
weapons are consecrated to a modern vision of the Grail. They have
inaugurated a new era of hope for the sick and the needy of Labrador.
A gentleman at whose house I was a guest told me that when still a youth
he had fought in the Civil War, been invalided home, and advised to take
a sea voyage for his health. He therefore took passage with a Gloucester
fisherman and set sail for the Labrador. The crew proved to be Southern
sympathizers, and one day, while my friend was ashore taking a walk, the
skipper slipped out and left him marooned. He had with him neither
money, spare clothing, nor anything else; and as British sympathies were
also with the South, he had many doubts as to how the settlers would
receive a penniless stranger and Northerner. Seeing his schooner bound
in an easterly direction, he started literally to run along the shore,
hoping that he might find where she went and catch her again. Mile after
mile he went, tearing through the tuckamore, or dense undergrowth of
gnarled trees, climbing over high cliffs, swimming or wading the
innumerable rivers, skirting bays, and now and again finding a short
beach along which he could hurry. At night, wet, dirty, tired, hungry,
penniless, he came to a fisherman's cottage and asked shelter and food.
He explained that he was an American gentleman taking a holiday, but had
not a penny of money. It spoke well for the people that they accepted
his story. He told me that they both fed and clothed him, and one
kind-hearted man actually the next day gave him some oilskin clothing
and a sou'wester hat—costly articles 'on Labrador' in those days. At
last arriving at Red Bay, he found his schooner calmly at anchor. He
went aboard at once as if nothing had happened, and stayed there (having
enjoyed enough pedestrian exercise for the time being) and no one ever
referred to his having been left behind. He was now, however, forty
years later, anxious to do something for the people of that section of
the Shore, and he gave me a thousand dollars toward building a small
cottage for a district nurse. Forteau was the village chosen, and
Dennison Cottage was erected as a nursing station and dispensary. It
forms an admirable half-way house between Battle and Harrington
hospitals, each being about a hundred miles distant. A local trader once
wrote me: 'Sister Bailey is doing fine work. The nursing station is a
blessing to the people of this part of the Shore.' Who would think that,
by a little act of kindness done forty-odd years ago to an old soldier,
we should now be reaping the benefit? Do the ripples of unselfish deeds
really last forever? It is little deeds of kindness which will bring
peace and righteousness to earth. Then life is a field of honour, after
all, and what we give to it is the measure of what we get out of it.
CHAPTER XXIV
WORK AS MEDICINE
THE difficulties encountered in work along the North Newfoundland and
Labrador Coast are due for the most part to ignorance and poverty and
not to lack of character in the local fishermen. There are drawbacks
like the polar current, and what some would regard as a plethora of ice
and snow for a somewhat undue portion of the year. There are the
difficulties of a population scattered in little villages strung along a
stormy coast-line, with infrequent communication by mail steamer in
summer, and with the isolation intensified in winter by the frozen sea
and a land without roads or railroads or motor cars or aeroplanes. All
one can count on as a highway is the vast blanket of snow and ice; the
only means of transport being the team of faithful dogs which at present
is the sole harbinger of Mr. Henry Ford's contribution to the comfort
and happiness of people in similar remote settlements elsewhere in the
world.
The great need and the great desire of our fishermen for themselves was
and is, not charity, but work—remunerative labour, the fruits of which
will enable them to buy the food and clothing which spell the difference
between resistance or non-resistance to nutritional diseases such as
beri-beri, scurvy, rickets, and tuberculosis, which are the bane of the
Coast. Secondly, they need—although they do not always recognize the
need—interesting work which will enable them to use and develop their
native resources and the natural handiness which is the heritage of
seafaring folk all over the world. Lastly, they need the type of work
which will offer them the durable satisfaction of producing something
which not only pleases them, but makes a sufficient appeal to outsiders
to be purchased on its merits, and not out of charity.
It was this challenge to find such work for them, an appeal which, like
that of the medical, surgical, social, and educational work, is all the
stronger because its potentiality is greater than its actuality, which
led to the beginning of our Industrial Department. A generation ago the
lives of the women of our northern coasts were particularly drab. Though
conditions are better to-day, to them still fall the prosaic tasks of
rearing large families, which household duties made almost impossibly
difficult because of meagre supplies and no conveniences, and of
gardening where the bones of Mother Earth are unduly numerous and
exposed. Their lives must be spent largely indoors at monotonous and
heavy duties; while the men, whose summer days are spent on the sea and
whose winter days are passed in the forest trapping or cutting wood,
have greater mental and physical variety and so more possibilities for
healthful living.
To create a nation of paupers would have been a disaster; so from the
beginning the rule was laid down and strictly adhered to that food and
clothing must be earned by work of some kind, and not doled out except
in cases of extreme poverty and pressing need.
Is it worth while to pay for hospitals to do patchwork on already
damaged human machines? Is it remunerative to spend time and money on
crippled humanity when there is so much constructive work which could be
done for those who are not and need never become crippled? Is the Greek
or the Roman philosophy of ridding the world of the defective, after
all, true wisdom? Is the attitude of the ages which we call 'Dark,'
which regarded the cripple as a source of humour, and even purposely
deformed children in order to exact high prices for them as jesters at
kings' courts, or else regarded them as cursed of God and linked with
the Devil and so tortured them and killed them as witches, a wiser
course of action than modern humanitarianism? We consider our Industrial
Department as perhaps the most important answer which we can make to the
solution of these questions.
There existed on the Coast the native industry of rug-hooking, to which
the women were accustomed from earliest childhood. The Devonshire and
Cornish and Scotch ancestors of our fisherfolk must have brought out
this industry with them from Old England at the same time that it
migrated to New England. Rug-making was an ideal industry with which to
begin. It did not have to be taught; it was essentially a 'spare-time'
occupation; little or much could be done at one time without any risk of
injury to the finished mat; it could be carried on in the home; the
necessary apparatus took up little space and could be made out of the
native wood.
Before the Industrial Department took up the work, the people had always
made mats for their cottages from worn-out garments; but, as the rugs
produced for the Grenfell Association were to be sold, it was important
that they should be hooked of entirely new materials, which must, of
course, be furnished to the women.
So long as the industrial work has in it a large element of necessary
educational training, so long as customs barriers continue to be erected
against it, so long as transportation is expensive and rents for shops
exorbitant, it is almost impossible for us as a charity to carry the
unavoidable overhead for this branch of our work. Yet we realize
increasingly that the really beautiful products of our clever,
mechanical people are sold on their merits, and are worth every penny
which is charged for them.
We can look back over twenty-five years of generous, able, and trained
workers who have taken charge of this steadily developing department,
beginning with Miss Jessie Luther, of Providence, who gave many years of
voluntary service and brought to the work not only enthusiasm, but a
trained mind and capacity. It was she who introduced the weaving of
home-spun, an industry which the local women had discontinued owing to
the poverty of their lives and the struggle for bare existence, which
left no margin of strength or money. Miss Luther also started the making
of pottery from our native clay, and encouraged and developed basketry
from local grasses, skin-work and bead-work.
Since those early days such strides have been taken in design,
colouring, and workmanship that the present mat grandchild would
scarcely recognize its ancestor if it were to be placed side by side
with it in one of our sales. The women are daily deriving from the
industrial work an incentive to better living, cleaner homes, and a
higher standard of life. We can safely say that our fisherwomen produce
the best hooked mats in the world, our patterns comprising a wide range
of subjects, from polar bears on icebergs to dog-teams scampering over
snowy wastes. We have literally raised our humble floor mats till to-day
they are fit to occupy the seats of the mighty as tapestries on the
walls of palaces.
The new flannelette and the jute for hooking many of our rugs still have
to be imported, but more and more we are substituting for these
materials the 'silk-stocking mat.' The slogan, 'When your stocking
begins to run, let it run to Labrador,' has been the watchword to guide
many hundreds of pairs of stockings which would otherwise have been
superannuated in the waste-paper basket, to another useful lease of life
on the Labrador.
The women of the Coast do the weaving also, as we have never been able
to induce the men, in the long hours of enforced idleness of our
winters, to follow the example of their Scotch prototypes or the
Huguenot refugees at Spitalfields and take up weaving as a masculine
home industry. It therefore remained for us to find a remunerative and
stimulating industry for the men and boys, especially the cripples and
convalescents. In the hospitals of civilization it is well recognized
that physical recovery is hastened or retarded by the mental condition
of the patient. In our hospitals in the North this was all the more
obvious, since the worry of a bread-winner over an empty cupboard and a
hungry family was often a more than serious handicap to his recovery.
Out of this need has grown our toy-making department. The dog-teams and
animals are cut from wood and painted from Nature. The _komatiks_ which
these dog-teams pull are exact models of the real sledges of the North
Country. Each particular slat is lashed to the miniature runners as in
the construction of a full-size _komatik_, for these would surely break
when they hit the snow-covered rocks or snags if they were assembled
with nails, whereas, when lashed, there is sufficient play to prevent
snapping. The hunter and his dog trundle along on wheels; and sometimes
the rôle of the hunter is reversed, and it is he who is chased by the
playful polar bear.
In an attempt to utilize the local resources of the Coast in this work
for the men, the ivory industry grew up; and many to-day look upon its
products as the most interesting and beautiful our people have to offer.
The ivory comes from the tusks of our walrus or narwhals, or from the
fine ivory teeth of the great dentate whale, the cachalot. The teeth of
all these whales which are taken on the Coast are now presented to us as
a free offering by the kindly whaling companies. They thus serve as an
hereditary tribute to the industrial welfare department. Bone and ivory
carving can readily be done in bed with small tools and files. We feel
that the apex of our ivory-work has been reached in the beautiful sets
of chessmen, fantastic figures of Eskimos, seals, bears, dogs, and
igloos, nothing quite like them ever having been put on the market
before.
Our winter garment, locally referred to as a _kossak_, or dickey, and
which is made of our own special Grenfell cloth, sells even at so smart
and civilized a spot as the Lake Placid Club. It has also paid a visit
to the Antarctic with Admiral Byrd's expedition, as he took with him two
or three of our former volunteers as members of his crew. For lightness
and warmth, for storm and rain and wind- and snow-proof qualities, for
beauty and picturesqueness, with its fur trimmings and bright-coloured
embroideries, this dickey does its own broadcasting.
Through the intervening years following Miss Luther's work, the
department has had the splendid help of a number of able and devoted
superintendents. To all of them the Coast owes more than it really
understands or appreciates. The present industrial manager is a lady
from Scotland. Her grasp, not only of the details, but of the broader
implications of her work, is great. It seems pertinent in this
connection to quote from her recent report, the title of which we have
already borrowed as the heading of this chapter:
The question has been asked whether it would not be cheaper to
pay to needy people the amount now spent on payment for
industrial work, and so disburse the same amount in charity
while avoiding all the trouble and expense involved in the
Industrial Department. Such an enquiry shows an entire
misapprehension of the work that this department is endeavouring
to do. As well might one ask whether it would not be cheaper to
pay the funeral expenses of those who die from preventable
diseases, and so avoid the trouble and expenditure of restoring
them to physical health. For the work of the Industrial
Department is as truly curative as the work of our hospitals,
and equally fitting as a branch of a medical mission.
The actual goods turned out for sale are in a sense only a
by-product. What we are really producing is character,
individuality independence; in a word, all that is implied in a
fully developed human being.
We hear a great deal in these days about the need of adjusting
the individual to his environment, and we know that when there
is a lack of such adjustment, physical, moral, and mental
breakdown results. Where can one find the possibility of such
adjustment in the case of an individual who is physically
handicapped in a community the conditions in which demand an
exceptional degree of physical strength? How give hope and
courage to a man whose life has taught him the futility of both?
How bring beauty and colour into the life of a woman whose soul
has been made barren of either by the bleak sordidness of
existence?
As a community those are the life-giving qualities we
lack—physical strength, courage, hope, beauty, colour. And who
will deny that to restore them is a fitting task for a medical
mission? Such, in brief, is our aim. 'How visionary and
highfalutin!' does someone say? Let us see.
Mr. A. came to hospital as a lad suffering from a tubercular
hip, very ill indeed, and not expected to live. Some years later
he was alive and well—lame, it is true, but able to get about
easily, earning a good wage at painting toys and able to
supervise and help others. His is a useful, full life, on a
self-respecting, independent basis. Without St. Anthony Hospital
he would have died; without the Industrial Department he would
have starved.
Mr. B., father of a large family, has a tubercular foot and a
tubercular hand, and is quite unable to go fishing. Now,
provided with a treadle jig-saw, he can work with his good foot,
and is making toys for his livelihood. He returned to his home
and family after treatment in hospital and industrial training.
C. is a very delicate boy with gastric trouble. He was unable to
go fishing, and was not strong enough when he came to us to
shovel coal into the furnace. In and out of the hospital, in and
out of the Industrial Department, he went during two years,
growing stronger steadily and earning money. Eventually restored
to health, he went to Canada to a brother and is now working for
himself there and doing well.
Mrs. D. is a married woman with a fisherman husband and several
children. Hear what she says when told one day that there was no
work for her.
'Too bad, that's two weeks now, Miss, and I never got no work.'
'So you miss it?'
'Why sure I misses it.'
[Illustration: HOME INDUSTRIES]
[Illustration: A UNIT OF THE INDUSTRIAL DEPARTMENT AT WORK]
'What would you do if there was not any more work ever?'
'Well, I don't know what I'd do. That's all we folks has to earn
a little bit. I buys many a good thing with the money, and then
again I goes in the clothing store and gets clothing for all
hands home. My, Miss, if there wasn't no work, I don't know how
we'd do at all.'
Scene: a living-room in a fisherman's cottage. A blizzard is
raging outside. There is no sound but that of the howling wind.
On the bench which runs round three sides of the wall are
sitting about a dozen men, silent, listless, doing nothing
because there is nothing to do. Not reading because they cannot.
Not even talking, for what is there to say? This is no
exception. There are many such winter days, and many such
places. But happily an industrial worker is among them, also
storm-stayed. She takes out of her bag some little wooden
articles and hands them round. They are all things which the men
are familiar with—_komatiks_, dogs, boats, and so on.
Conversation starts, and the next stormy day there will be
something to do, copying these little toys. So they join the
'stormy day brigade,' and when spring comes round many a
much-needed article can be purchased with the money received
from the Industrial Department in exchange for the toys. 'Do you
like making them?' we asked one such man. 'Miss, I just loves
it,' he answered; and the bright, interested look on his face
showed the change which had taken place since we saw him last.
A visitor returning to the Coast to-day after an absence of years would
notice a marked improvement in the clothing of the people. This, of
course, is largely due to the splendid donations of good clothing sent
by the many friends of Labrador; but it is the Industrial Department
which has solved the problem of distributing the clothing without
pauperizing the recipients. One has only to remember the severity of the
sub-Arctic climate to realize the primary importance to health and
efficiency of proper clothing. It is really 'mat money' which is
preventing the recurrence of an incident of some years past when a child
came walking barefooted over the snow to the Industrial Building because
she had no shoes and stockings, with the temperature at twenty below
zero. Moreover, she had no coat to wear over her cotton frock.
The Department also allows school children to come in as short-time
workers during their holidays, or even for a little work in the long
sub-Arctic evenings. This is arranged so that the child is allowed a
reasonable amount of playtime. One little girl who had paid for her own
school fees and books for two years by weaving 'on times' said to the
superintendent, 'You know, miss, I likes to do it. It makes me feel so
good.'
The area covered by the activities of the Industrial Department now
stretches from Cape St. John on the east coast of Newfoundland and from
Ferole on the west coast, to the most northerly part of the island. It
includes Harrington and Mutton Bay on the Canadian Labrador, and covers
many hundreds of miles of coast northward along the Labrador. Naturally
the larger part of the work is concentrated around our hospitals, the
main centre being at St. Anthony. There are about a dozen subsidiary
stations dotted along the Coast.
Gradually these products of our Industrial Department, the dog-teams,
the bears, the birds, the Arctic hares, whether hooked in rugs or carved
in ivory or wood, the homespuns, the dickeys, the baskets, the polished
Labradorite, began voyaging farther and farther afield, to the United
States, Canada, and England. They were a kind of sub-polar migration.
But finding purchasers for goods is perhaps the world's biggest problem
to-day. It is being made increasingly difficult by endless tariff walls,
which soon make the people on both sides the walls poorer, less able to
produce, and less able to buy. On some polished blue stone which we sent
to New York, one hundred per cent duty was paid. In order to try and
market these products of the people, we have had to make the great
venture of faith of renting a shop in New York and one in Philadelphia.
Even as I write, we are having to close down the New York shop as the
rental is prohibitive.
This marketing problem, however, affords another fertile challenge to
service, so some of our _alumnae_ volunteers devised a new plan. Taking
a Ford truck, they began touring the various summer resorts with our
industrial goods. Through the kind co-operation of hotel-keepers and
individual hostesses, they were able to hold many sales. Later, a new
car was presented by the ex-Governor of Vermont, and a new Ford by that
great industrialist, Mr. Henry Ford himself. In this latter Lady
Grenfell and I have made several combined lecture and industrial-sale
trips. Anyone can recognize the car, for in unashamed letters on the
outside it is labelled 'Grenfell Labrador Industries.'
One day when Lady Grenfell was alone on an Industrial errand and
alighted in a town, a small boy came up to her and enquired anxiously,
'Have you got him inside?' On another occasion, a lady passing asked who
it was descending from the truck, whereupon a scornful Boy Scout piped
up, 'Oh! don't you know? That's the guy who wrote _Afloat on a
Dustpan_.'
At the great Imperial Exhibition at Wembley, England, we had a stall,
the beauty of which was that it was largely run by American volunteers.
They greatly enjoyed selling dog-teams, model kayaks, and ivory carving
to Her Majesty the Queen of England, who made a special visit to the
stall. International industrial co-operation is one sure road to world
peace. On another occasion I had the pleasure of illustrating this to
King Edward the Seventh when he asked what an unpaid magistrate like
myself did for police in Labrador. 'I generally swear in an American
college boy to serve Your Majesty temporarily,' I replied.
Yet another effort at marketing the Labrador and North Newfoundland
goods is the Dog-Team Tavern on the Champlain Highway at Ferrisburg,
Vermont. Never has a better illustration of co-operation been
established. We had no money. Yet some further outlet had to be found
for the articles unless we were going to throw hundreds of needy people
out of the only remunerative work they had. We rented a picturesque but
dilapidated old farmhouse. The grounds were a wilderness. Lady Grenfell,
with her real courage, made a personal tour of the shops in Burlington,
asking their co-operation, as well as that of individual well-wishers.
Almost everything, including a stove for the kitchen, was freely given.
I shall never forget one call which I made with her, quaking in my
shoes. The proprietor was neither of our race nor religion, nor our
acquaintance; and scarcely any business was remunerative at that time.
However, that proprietor was the type of man who regards all men as
brothers, which is the only type which can save the world. 'You want a
dozen chairs and a table? Gladly! Thank you for the opportunity.' Before
we left he added, 'Later on I'll pay a visit to the Dog-Team Tavern and
buy one or two of those Labrador rugs.'
The industrial work has expanded rapidly, owing to its filling a more
and more important place in the life of the community. The present
Industrial Building is a leaky, shaky, frame building, too small and
unhygienic. As a matter of fact, it is the old orphanage, which was
abandoned years ago after the bufferings of the storms of many winters
had made it unfit for the children to live in. We are thrown between
Scylla and Charybdis—the alternative of turning away those who
desperately need the training and chance of earning a livelihood or
taking them in to work under conditions which endanger their health. The
sanitation of the building causes us constant worry. The whole plumbing
system may collapse at any moment. The heating is irregular and
uneconomical. With the slightest blizzard, the snow drifts in at every
window. The condition of the roof is so bad that when the spring and
fall rains come the rooms on the top floor are flooded and the water
leaks down the walls to the second floor. The roof has been patched and
patched until it can be patched no more. Into this building is crowded
the preparation of all the mats for hundreds of miles of coast, and
about two thousand women 'mat hookers' who are on the books of the
Industrial Department. The weaving-rooms are limited to thirty looms,
and we have to turn girls back to their often dreary little homes since
we have no room to give them work. The wood and ivory work is carried on
in a tiny room on the second floor, crowded with hand and electric
machinery, wood benches, wood ready to be sawn, toys in process of
construction, ivory supplies, and general tools. The toy painting is
done in a room with a sloping ceiling and a low dormer window, which
does not admit proper light or give sufficient air space for the
workers.
The waiting-room to which the women of the district have to come with
their work is a small portion of the dilapidated old kitchen. It is dark
and damp, furnished with two wooden benches, a rusty stove, a bath-tub,
and a sink. In another corner of this same room all the dyeing of the
materials for the Department has been done until a summer or two ago,
when we were forced to take the boiler and tanks into the open and pray
for a long spell of dry weather! It is quite certain that we have
reached the capacity of production of this present building for the
large area and number of people it serves. Indeed, during the winter of
1931-32 we were obliged to close it entirely, as we could not afford to
keep so uneconomical and dangerous a plant going. The Department has
always made it its policy to put out work into the homes of the people,
rather than bring them to a central building in any district, but there
are many processes which must be done at a headquarters. We must have
storage for our raw materials. Moreover, under present conditions there
is no chance whatever for developing new branches of the Industrial
Department, such as the polishing of our beautiful Labradorite, or
making pottery from our local clay—which we were forced to discontinue
owing to utter lack of space.
The Industrial Department has to stand on its own financial feet. Sales
have increased, workers provided with remunerative occupation have
increased in numbers very greatly; but so have our expenses and our
responsibilities. We hate to think that we may not be able to continue
even to try to meet the challenge of the Coast along lines of industrial
and economic welfare, because our handicaps—the need for larger
markets, for working capital, and for adequate central headquarters—are
insurmountable.
CHAPTER XXV
LABRADOR TAKES A GLIMPSE AT THE ORIENT
IN 1924, the aftermath of the 'war of civilization to end war' was
already demonstrating its failure. The Western world had been in the
witness box and found wanting, despite its outward show of material and
scientific progress.
After thirty years in the sub-Arctic, no one could have approached a
tour around the world with greater anticipation and pleasure than we
did. We decided that Egypt should be our first objective. Long before
the dawn of history it had evolved a civilization which, to our minds,
seemed to put many of our modern ones to shame.
With deserts on each side to protect it, the barrier of the sea in front
and only African natives behind, with its magnificent river, its
climate, its endless man-power, it was easy to picture how Egypt, like
Crete, could have remained peaceful through the centuries. Yet there,
too, the uncertain element of human nature had been evidenced by the
trails for their enemies which the Egyptians themselves had blazed, by
their constant warlike expeditions to the north in attempts to conquer
Palestine and Syria.
The water-front at Alexandria, viewed from our eyrie on the upper deck
of the steamer which had borne us from Trieste, made us feel much as
Moses must have felt when with his host he clambered up the bank on the
other side of the Red Sea, and saw the waters close in upon their foes,
with a devout thankfulness that they were not among them.
An entry in our diary that first day reads, 'Baksheesh is the national
anthem from Alexandria to the Sudan.' Every moment that we were trying
to enjoy the mighty Pyramids, the immortal Sphinx, or the other marvels
of Egypt, our ears ached from the discordant yells of men and boys
fighting to extract piastres from the unfortunate. They reminded us of
nothing so much as a pack of our Eskimo dogs in violent conflict over a
bone. The query came to our minds whether Holy Writ had not omitted to
catalogue this plague among the others which formerly afflicted the Land
of the Pharaohs.
Through the kindness of Hassanein Bey, who has made such significant
explorations in the Lybian Desert, we were invited by one of his friends
to visit the Fayoum, truly the garden spot of Egypt. The Fayoum might be
an Oriental Ireland, it is so green; while maize, cotton, oranges, figs,
guavas, dates, eggplants, tomatoes, cabbages, bananas, and pears
flourish luxuriantly. Whilst we were there, the Governor was kind enough
to entertain us and show us many of his attempts for the advancement of
his country. He has endeavoured to suit his reforms to the needs of the
people; and we found such industries as a shoe factory, a technical
school, an iron factory, and a cabinet-maker's shop, as well as a Farm
Bureau for the instruction of the rural population.
The earliest Egyptians recorded in history are said to have been a
pastoral people, as, indeed, were all the peoples of warm climates.
To-day, Egypt holds her future in her own hands and can yet be a mighty
country if the strength of a land lies in its agriculture; but with
Egypt, in spite of her wonderful river, irrigation must be the answer to
her problem. During the ascent of the Nile one is struck by the constant
emphasis on water. The days are punctuated by the sight of naked men
toiling endlessly at pumps, by the creaking of the ever-recurrent
_shadoofs_, and by the endless treading of the patient animals
circumnavigating the _sakeeyahs_.
From one's armchair on the deck of Cook's Nile steamer one views a
cinema which gives one the sensation of looking at one's contemporary
ancestors. At dawn, when the more intrepid among us, wrapped in warm
coats, would emerge on deck, the dim light revealed a few statuesque
natives taking a morning dip in some back-wash of the river before
saying their prayers, their faces toward Mecca. All through the days
there passed down the river a kaleidoscope of picturesque _dahabeeyahs_,
laden with every imaginable type of merchandise, and generally stacked
so high that if it had not been for their lateen sails, they could not
have functioned at all. Occasionally, a huge outrigger would drift by,
innumerable clay water-pots piled on her deck; or it might be two
vessels lashed together, carrying a cargo of straw sticks so that they
looked like aquatic hay-pooks. We tried to live again in imagination the
days when Cheops was erecting his pyramids, or the Ptolemies were
rearing temples and statues in their own honour, or the times of the
Arabs, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, and lastly the Britons, who
came, saw, and conquered in this land.
At Esna, when one saw Ptolemy dancing before his god the picture was so
realistic that we felt Pavlova might have been jealous; while at
Denderah the horrible reproduction of the prisoners feeding the king's
lions with their own right arms made one shudder as if one were looking
into the arena at living victims. At Denderah also there is a huge
painting on the temple wall of Cleopatra and Caesarian, her son by
Julius Caesar. The interest of it lies in the fact that it is said to
disprove the theory that she was a Negroid.
Thebes, the oldest and perhaps the greatest city in Egypt, is indeed a
place to conjure up dreams. Here dwelt the god Amen Ra, the Jupiter of
Egypt. It was to his temple that the great Alexander tried to find a
guide at Alexandria to pilot him four hundred miles up the river, in
order to cheat himself into the belief that his father was the sun god
and not the great Philip of Macedon. Some say that he actually arrived
at his Mecca and executed what was really a keen diplomatic move, by
having himself pronounced the son of Amen Ra.
In contrast, the story of King Ahknaton, who revolted against the
villainy of the priests and their degrading practices, is an
inspiration. Due to the influence of his mother he strove to have the
people worship, not Amen Ra, the sun, but Aton Ra, the power that gives
life to earth and mankind. The gory pastimes of his predecessors
sickened him. Courageous as was the young king, the priestcraft of the
day triumphed ultimately, and the court, which Ahknaton had moved from
Thebes to Tel el Amara, returned to Thebes in the reign of his son, the
now famous Tutankhamen.
Egyptology has been in the family, and one of my father's cousins, at
the time he was Sirdar, had excavated some interesting tombs across the
river from the town of Assuan. We christened them 'the Grenfell family
vaults.' Another cousin, whilst digging up old papyri in the ancient
city of Oxyrhynchus, discovered the famous Logos, or sayings of Christ,
thus contributing more to the world than if he had exhumed a baker's
dozen of departed kings. We later made a pilgrimage on donkeys to the
grave of another cousin, who died in a cavalry charge at Omdurman, on
the relief expedition to Khartoum.
As we were anxious to miss none of the experiences of the typical
tourist, we decided to risk a day's ride on a camel to the ancient
Coptic Convent of Saint Simon. Once aloft on the camels, we found
ourselves on a kind of tableland. We could only trust that the venerable
sheepskins on which we were perched had been ascepticized by the ardent
sun of Upper Egypt. The only visible means of support for the intrepid
traveller were two small pommels fore and aft on the saddles. While your
camel walked, you were hurled back and forth with considerable violence
and with a persistency evidenced by the scraping off of a certain
portion of your anatomy on the forward swing, while the return stroke
removed another area. This experience was varied when our steeds started
to trot, whereupon we were bounced up and down like unwilling pistons in
a cylinder, while we thought lovingly of our dog-teams in Labrador.
The manner of our exodus from the Land of Egypt did not repeat the
Biblical precedent, for we accomplished the journey, which had cost
Moses and the Children of Israel some forty years, on an overnight
train-de-luxe running from Cairo to Jerusalem. A full moon shone
brightly on us as we disembarked at Kantara, and the Canal resembled a
crystal sea, with two great black ships passing like phantoms on their
voyage between the deserts.
Palestine can rightly be regarded as belonging to the desert which is
the former home of its people, and whose influence marks their thought
and their language. Its boundaries were never defined, though to-day it
covers an area one hundred and ten miles in length by fifty miles wide.
It is still a 'parched land where no water is.' Four trains were
carrying thousands of tons of Nile water up to Jerusalem each day,
apparently fulfilling the ancient prophecy that the Holy City could not
be conquered until the Nile flowed into it. Palestine has no rivers
except the Jordan and the Kedron and singularly few wells. With the
passing of centuries, its population has diminished a thousandfold. It
is a mere pathway between two great cradles of the human race, the
Arabian Desert on the one hand backing up the deep valley of the Jordan,
a great sea on the other, lofty mountains on the north, and the Desert
of Sinai cutting it off on the south.
The too credulous visitor, with a passion for sacred rites, will be
rudely disillusioned in Palestine. Jerusalem itself has been destroyed
and risen out of its own ashes many times. It is a mercy of Providence
that the present level of the city is forty feet above that of the time
of Our Lord. Religious sites in Palestine are the prototypes of
baksheesh in Egypt. Most of them are so obviously faked that they become
a source of annoyance even to the gullible.
The present road to Jericho follows doubtless the same line as that
traversed by the Good Samaritan. As it is the only road up to Jerusalem,
Our Lord must often have come along it. In that one day's motor journey
we visited the spot where Elisha struck the river with his mantle, the
traditional place of Christ's Baptism, the point of the river where the
Israelites passed over under the leadership of Joshua. Though we looked
across into the Land of Gilead, we could distinguish none of those trees
which yielded the precious pear. The legend of Saint Christopher and the
Christ Child is also ascribed to this ford in Jordan, as is the healing
of Naaman of his leprosy. Bathing in the Dead Sea is a unique
experience, and I was delighted to find that the water was so salt that
I could comfortably eat an apple and read a book while floating on my
back practically on its surface.
In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the authentic tomb of Sir Philip
d'Aubigny, a tutor in the family of King Henry the Third. One rejoices
to feel that after his efforts to reach this to him most sacred
resting-place, probably no one will ever dig him up. His simple tomb is
a welcome contrast to the altar with the two holes drilled in its sides
through which it is still alleged that sacred fire from heaven issues
every Easter to light the pilgrims' candles. The most shocking fraud,
however, is the Tomb of Christ, a slab about five feet long which is
said to have been the covering of the entrance of 'his own new tomb'
which Joseph of Arimathaea 'had hewn out in the rock.'
Fortunately, Dean Stanley points out that 'the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre has not at all times been a mere battleground for its several
occupants. There the traveller sees nations, with different languages,
each with its own rites, worshipping in one spot. That is the unique
sight through the ages—and once they all believed that this was the
site of the Tomb of their common Lord.'
The upper part of the Ecce Homo Arch is in the street, while its base
has been excavated below the level of the present town and is in the
chapel of the Convent of the Sisters of Zion. The flagging beneath the
arch is believed to be the actual pavement in front of Pilate's judgment
seat—the 'Gabbatha.' The worn stones are deeply grooved in lines made
by the games of the Roman soldiers. Through this very arch Christ must
have passed after being condemned to be crucified.
One result of the War was a motor-car service across the Syrian Desert
from Damascus to Baghdad, the capital of Mesopotamia, another 'cradle of
the human race.' There was built the Tower of Babel, for thence, 'it was
only one step to heaven.' The ruins of Babylon are so far gone as
scarcely even to suggest the height of civilization to which it had
attained. The enormous thickness of its walls, on which two four-horse
chariots could easily pass abreast at full speed, suggested that no
effort or expense had been spared to ensure the permanence of the
policies which led its monarch to exclaim that all which man could do to
make for human happiness had been accomplished. The Bible account shows
how great an illusion that 'master of the world' was under. Truly he
believed that he had created an eternal city in this 'great Babylon that
he had built'; but that very faith was itself the presage of both its
and his undoing.
What might this place have been if the world of that day had awakened to
the appreciation of the great illusion it was under? As a summary of our
observations, I read in my diary: 'Garbage and dirt everywhere.
Evil-smelling, mean streets. Not a thoroughfare through the town except
one cleared by the Germans. Diseases lurking in every corner. To those
who love dirty, poky corners, dark, blind alleys, suggestions to every
sense of a long-bygone mediaevalism, we heartily commend this city.'
We had wished to visit Russia, as she seems to be trying out anew the
old theory that man is a robot and that his happiness can be attained
(if that word is applicable to a machine) by forcing him to function
rightly. The experiment is a trifle belated, for determinism and
materialism are now rightly discredited intellectually, and that by far
more advanced intelligentsia than Russia at the moment permits to exist.
The cocksure materialism of the nineteenth century has culminated to-day
in the necessity for the mysterious 'H factor,' either to explain
phenomena or to allow advances to be made. The Russian experimenters,
however, preferred at that time to let tourists get impressions
second-hand and cancelled our visas. Some eight years afterwards, in
1931, in order to form her own deductions, Lady Grenfell went to Moscow
and Leningrad; only to realize that one must still wait before visitors
are permitted to see for themselves conditions as they really are.
As for Kish, home of kings, which four thousand years ago had rivalled
Babylon itself, all the searchings of the antiquarians had only just
discovered its whereabouts. The station for it was an ancient iron tank.
We found the city at last, right in the centre of nowhere, with a
horizon of sand on every side! When Ur of the Chaldees, also close by,
was founded in 2300 B.C., palm trees covered the plain, and a far more
elaborate irrigation system than that of modern Egypt enabled the people
to cultivate and raise cattle and necessary vegetables, as the records
unearthed recently show. The Bible tells us that some presentiment
induced the 'Father of the Faithful' to leave Ur. There is reason to
believe that his prophetic soul already had a vision of the great
illusion.
The illusion for us was never dispelled, for when we finally sailed for
India from Basrah not one vestige of all that human glory had we seen.
The impression left on our minds was that we had passed over one vast
ocean of flat, dried-up mud.
I was reared in an atmosphere of India. Among my earliest recollections
is that of my mother's telling me stories of the beautiful land of her
birth, or else clambering on to my uncle's knee to feel the bullet in
his forehead which he got at Lucknow while he was helping to defend the
Residency in the great Mutiny. At that time he was aide-de-camp to Sir
Henry Lawrence.
It has always seemed to me that the colour prejudice which some people
feel so strongly is either a convenient cover for national and racial
selfishness or else an invention of one's mind. In a sense, the Indians
are our blood cousins, being men of the Aryan race like ourselves.
The history of the self-government of India, which stretches back four
thousand years, paints a picture not of peace and progress and
prosperity, but of racial and religious hatreds, unspeakable butcheries
and terrible wars. Women were degraded. Education was paralysed. Gross
superstitions and savageries continued to dominate the unhappy land.
To-day India has a population of three hundred and twenty million
people, separated by nine great religions, and by over one hundred and
thirty different languages. As if this were not enough to divide the
country, there still exists a rigid caste system, made up of nearly two
thousand exclusive castes, even more of a barrier between man and man
than is the industrial class system of our Western world, since in India
marriage is forbidden between members of different castes. Yet to the
outside visitor a certain fascination of the country lies in this very
diversity in all the aspects of her national life.
It is difficult to describe how the land impresses one, with its
gorgeous, blooming trees, its picturesque villages of bizarre
architecture which seems to melt into the landscape of mango orchards
and palm groves. What man who has lived in our Western world, either in
the crowded cities like London or New York, could fail to love the
ever-changing panorama of the Indian town, which constantly reminded us
of the aurora borealis of our Arctic sky? Or one like myself, who for a
large portion of his life has taken his morning dip in the polar current
and often between pans of ice, could fail to appreciate a bath in the
lovely breakers of the Coromandel Beach?
India's vast jungles supply nearly every valuable wood in the world,
while there is hardly a fruit or a vegetable which the country cannot
produce. The fact that at practically no time of the year is artificial
heating necessary was to us rather a drawback than otherwise; but here
in Labrador one closes one's eyes and relives in memory the experience
of glorious warmth and colour, which to us was a veritable dreamland
compared with physical aspects of the forbidding rocks of our ice-bound
Coast, perpetually swept by a sea of ice.
At Delhi we had the privilege of meeting Mr. Gandhi, whom we found
sitting in the sun on the upper balcony of his house. We considered this
interview an opportunity; for however much one may differ with him as to
the political salvation of India, one cannot fail to admit that his
motives are sincere and unselfish, misguided though his actions may be.
We shall never forget the impression made upon us of that stronghold of
superstition and idolatry, Conjeeveram, 'the Benares of the South,' with
its juggernaut cars, its idols, its religious processions, its bells to
notify the gods that it was time to go to bed, its spasmodic fireworks
to amuse other gods, its oil and milk poured over some of the idols and
later collected by the faithful and drunk as a cure for their ills. The
townspeople seemed to see nothing out of the way in the following item
in the local newspaper: 'Last evening, during the course of the
procession, the Diety [the spelling is the paper's, not mine] most
unfortunately fell off into the drain. By the concerted efforts of the
worshippers, however, he was restored to his position at eight o'clock.'
It was, however, with deep regret that we bade good-bye to India and the
happy weeks which we had spent there were only a memory. We realized, as
we had never been able to do before, that it is one of the most
important lands on earth, not only because it possesses so large a
section of the human race, but because its history shows intellectual
achievements which might have made it a leader in the world to-day, had
it not chained itself to insidious creeds and customs. India is full of
capable, lovable, and honest people, but it can never develop its full
potentiality by merely dropping down aerial roots from the branches
overhead, any more than can its roadside banyan trees, whose descending
tendrils are hidden just below the level of the earth, where the teeth
of the ever-present but untouchable and sacred cow cannot reach them.
The convictions left in our minds by the various mission activities
which we had visited were first that they were human, but that we
heartily thanked God for them and for what they have accomplished for
India and the world. We could not fail to notice that the natural and
universal co-operation between the activities working for the same end
is increasing rapidly, in proportion as the interest in dogmas, creeds,
and human institutions is replaced by the realization that love is the
only solution of the world's problems, Russia _contradicente_, and the
understanding that real love in action is humble as well as heroic and
must be interpreted in much the same way. We came to the conclusion that
human government has been human in India as well as in Chicago, but its
bias has been strongly just and would match up well, judged by their
records. That it has been a blessing to India no living man can honestly
doubt in the face of history.
An outstanding demonstration of what preaching by example can do in
attacking prejudices and wrongs fearlessly is the great school in
Srinagar, which, in the face of every possible opposition,
discouragement, and danger, has made and is making new men out of the
exclusive Brahmins. The Reverend Tyndale-Biscoe's own modest account of
his work, in a little book entitled _Forty Years Upstream_, is as fine
an antidote as I know to the discouragement caused by the present state
of affairs in civilization.
The next eastward step on our rapid pilgrimage was China. Here we felt
that her unwieldy size was perhaps her greatest handicap. Her population
is as large as that of the United States, Italy, Spain, Belgium,
Holland, and South America, all combined. Over this dense mass of
humanity one finds comparatively none of the modern controls of material
forces or the conservation of the marvellous natural resources. This
lack spells famines, floods, poverty, misery, and human life cheap and
insecure everywhere. Moreover, languages, customs, and the diversity of
natural settings all make it impossible for the same laws or religion to
suit the whole of China.
We took a journey of eight hundred miles up the great Yangtze-Kiang, the
fourth largest river in the world, passed endless cities and the teeming
life of the huge stream, and thence by rail or steamer covered thousands
of miles more. The fact that crises are so constantly recurrent in the
history of Europe, of India, of Egypt, of China, makes one doubt whether
they may not be necessary steps of evolution. Painful as they are,
disturbing to peace of mind, involving loss of life and property, are
they after all only evidences of that 'divine discontent' which Charles
Kingsley sought to arouse in England a few years ago? To-day, Kingsley
is forgiven by the very section of society which so severely censured
him. Probably civil wars will not last forever. The Christian
foundations are laid too deep to be destroyed in the end.
The fool of the family does not find a job on the staff of a mission
to-day, supposing that he ever did. What surprised us, perhaps, most in
China was that we never got off at any city, however smelly or
primeval-looking, without finding a mission hospital or school or
Christian effort of some sort endeavouring to sweeten the atmosphere,
many of them now staffed by splendidly capable native Chinese, highly
trained in Europe or America.
We could not fail to notice, too, that old hampering customs are
disappearing. For the most part even the pigtail has gone from the head
of the Chinaman. The spirit walls are coming down from in front of the
doors of their homes—walls built to keep evil spirits from entering
since they cannot turn corners, but which literally and figuratively
have kept light and air from the very homes which they were intended to
protect. To-day one seldom sees the scaffolding of a new house decorated
with branches tied on the tops of the poles in order to deceive those
evil spirits, who are trying to find an entrance, into imagining that it
is only a forest. The unbinding of the feet of the women is in itself a
symbol of that greater freedom which is being accorded to them; without
which freedom for womanhood China or any other country can never hope to
come to its own. The extraordinary skill exhibited by the Chinese men
and women, so many of whom live out their whole existence on the great
rivers, never failed to excite our admiration. Moreover, the calm
insouciance of the Chinese acceptance of circumstances, which would
drive the Western world to madness, keeps one on tiptoe in watching the
technique of life in this ant-hill of a country.
Even the most sophisticated shopper would be awakened into activity by
the lure of the streets of a Chinese city. You are tempted by every
variety of goods. There are the caged-bird markets, the soapstone
carvers, the old-clothes men singing little odes in praise of their
wares, the side-shows, the medicine-men who are selling their
'cure-alls' on the principle of machine-gun artillery, charged with such
a variety of explosives that some must find their mark. Dried snakes and
partially ground-up bones seemed to be the favourites among the
ingredients. In one place we found that our kind host had acquired no
small reputation as a healer. Years before, this clergyman had been
called to see a woman who had taken a lethal dose of opium, as a 'spite'
against her husband. By heroic doses of mustard, hot water, and coffee,
he had dragged her back to life. It is really a fearful disgrace to have
your wife commit suicide against you.
[Illustration: CONVALESCENTS AT WORK AT ST. ANTHONY]
[Illustration: THE LOOM ROOM]
When we left China for Korea and watched the countryside flitting past,
far the most striking feature to us was the never-ending panorama of
hill-sides and valleys, glorious in a new covering of green, a fresh
garment given them by the Japanese, who seem to surpass all the world in
tree-planting. Korea is mountainous, rising to about nine thousand feet
in places. It has an equable climate and an all-the-year-round ice-free
coast-line. We carried away from the country the impression of a polite
and gentle people, with qualities childlike rather than childish. One
can only hope for it the happy future of a free and contented Dominion,
associated with Japan as Canada is bound to the British Empire.
Cleanliness is the priceless heirloom of Japan, though the masses of her
people are pathetically poor. Again in my diary I find the following:
'Although not the result of personal observation, creditable evidence
convinces me that everybody in Japan takes a hot bath every day.'
Certainly the cleanliness of the 'inside of the cup' does not depend
upon the possession of pounds and pence.
One's vocabulary fails in attempting to depict the exquisite beauties of
the country in late May, with its flowering trees, from the gorgeous
plum to the famous cherry (the fluttering of whose falling leaves has
been brilliantly styled 'the soul of old Japan'), the feathery bamboos
among the wistaria, or the lotuses, whose hues turn the rivers, lakes,
and morasses into vivid dreams of colour.
At Kamakura is the Amida Buddha, the largest on earth. He was cast in
bronze about A.D. 800. To his shrine come endless pilgrims. On the day
of our visit I carried my usual butterfly-net. As the demeanour of the
pilgrim crowd did not suggest a place of worship, when a large and
enticingly rare, black, velvety butterfly passed close by, I gave
instant chase. The creature, possessed either by the Devil or by the
spirit of mischief, kept just out of reach over my heretical head until
the moment when it suddenly swooped downward, thus tempting me to leap
after it into the air. My descent from the bound was timed exactly at
the stone wall of an exceedingly sacred but equally muddy pond. Over
this parapet I leaped unwittingly, and landed on all fours in the sacred
slime of ages! Fellow-pilgrims were doubtless amazed to see an ancient
mariner select that particular moment for a mud bath. Their innate
courtesy, however, prevented their showing any signs of amusement,
though my Western companions were not equally reticent with their
emotions.
Would that the Colony of Newfoundland had copied the Japanese example in
stimulating new industries, for Japan already grows more food per acre
than any other country in the world. Her fields are divided into tiny
square mud plots, separated by ridges, so that they resemble exaggerated
waffles. The Government of Japan is engaged in fostering every sort of
trade from soap to silkworms—all the more creditable because the soul
of the people is not in the market-place. The world must awake to the
fact that China and Japan have come out of what to us may have seemed
their long sleep. For good or ill, they must be reckoned with in the
struggle for existence which mankind must increasingly face.
It is so utterly impossible to think that even the wise men of the ages
have really been, and still are, victims of a great illusion, that it is
little wonder that the world should remain satisfied even though the
fact confronts it. We admit that it seems impious and the last word in
conceit to say so. Therefore, we are told to-day that such deception
cannot be actually true, not even of ostriches.
Yet Sir Norman Angell's prophecies have been literally fulfilled, and
twentieth-century science is already questioning another 'illusion' when
it admits that life after death is probable. Where can we men in the
street look for data on this subject, written in the story of the
conditions which produced the nations of to-day, and which the material
development of the earth's surface teaches? How is it possible for the
average man to see the 'end results' of the old beliefs, so proving the
pudding by the eating, instead of merely listening any longer to the
babble of men, half-learned and partially informed by what all men know
is only 'current' science.
The Norsemen, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Germany—all the most highly
civilized European powers—have attempted, and in turn temporarily
succeeded, in attaining world domination by fighting. All alike have
thought that to be the road to the greatest happiness. Each in turn has
been disillusioned. Russia is at present engaged in seeking world
happiness through physical compulsion, on the ancient assumption that,
religion notwithstanding, man is after all only a machine. In their
search for reality, some scientists still cling to this premise, though
to make progress and discoveries they must work on the basis of eternal
faith to venture, which is the exactly opposite theory. Man without
faith cannot exist. That is an axiom of our human existence.
We are too prone to attribute the highest wisdom to unaided intellect
and to forget that intellectuals, like other humans, have been known to
cling to illusions which ultimately destroy. They themselves are subject
to that element of uncertainty in things and people which has routed
materialism, found determinism of doubtful value, and in the
laboratories of our greatest thinkers to-day is evidencing that through
the illimitable emotions, such as love, can truth and ultimate reality
alone be apprehended.
CHAPTER XXVI
HONOURS
AS the years have gone by, different bodies have been kind enough to
confer on me various unmerited honours, every one of which, however, has
been most sincerely appreciated. One need not say that each has helped
in its turn to encourage one to try and do better. The players may not
understand the meaning of the shouting of the crowd, but it does afford
a stimulus. Long ago, one learned that, if you want to make a man do his
best, trust him, even if he is Peter, or Thomas, or Judas. 'Credit,'
'trust,' mean as much in one walk of life as another, and I owe the
world reparations for which I must ask a permanent moratorium.
The Royal Scottish Geographical Society, at one of their annual
functions, presented me with their Livingstone Gold Medal. To be linked
even in name with David Livingstone, a fellow medical man and one of my
lifelong heroes, who, though passed beyond our sight, still functions as
much, if not more, than during his visible stay on earth to inspire
others, suggests a confidence among men we honour that does add 'power
to the elbow,' which is more often needed than we always admit.
The gift from New York University (said, with its thirty-five thousand
students, to be the largest in the world) was indeed a welcome new
buttress in the constant argument which every man's _persona_ must have
with his mechanical brain. Every thinking man wants the encouragement
that comes from men of learning regarding one's faith as reasonable.
A little later, another highly prized degree was conferred on me by
Berea College in far-off Kentucky, where we have sent so many students,
because that college has inspired one hundred per cent of them to want
to gain knowledge that they might return and give it out in help and
inspiration to their less privileged neighbours. Berea, formed for the
help of the 'poor white trash,' isolated by the mountains, aims not
merely to inform, but primarily to inspire, its students. It truly
deserves the name of Educator, leading as it does its _alumni_ out of
themselves and into world service.
The speaker of the Convocation was the youngest president of any large
college, the University of Chicago; one of the greatest in the world,
Dr. Hutchins. His opening words were: 'There are many institutions of
learning in this country much larger than this one, which if they
dropped out to-morrow would hardly be missed in the world's economy. But
if this college were to drop out, the world would be poorer.' To the
last part of which we who knew the facts most fervently added, 'Amen.'
One of our former 'wops,' now Chairman of the New England Grenfell
Association, beloved by everyone who knows him, and more beloved the
more you know him, influenced his Alma Mater to invite me to become an
honorary _alumnus_. They did not have to wait long for my answer.
Bowdoin boys were among the first to discover the canyon of the Labrador
Grand Falls, during the very year I first landed on the Coast. A narrow
escape they had, a creeping fire having burned all their food, camp,
boat, and outfit three hundred miles from human habitation. I always
think of them as they came out of the country, barelegged and with
remains of straw hats tied on their feet, as their boots had long worn
out while they were coming down the turbulent river and crossing the
large lakes on logs, an experience which would have tried the best
mettle of professional lumberjacks. Moreover, Cole and Carey had
subsisted on a diet which entitled them to rank with Mr. Gandhi as
professional starvation experts.
Donald MacMillan, Admiral Peary's lieutenant, is also a Bowdoin man, and
has done much to help the under-privileged among the Eskimos of Northern
Labrador. Only one thing was lacking—the President who gave the
'honour' has not as yet found time to visit Labrador and judge our work
personally.
Yet another honour which came to me seemed one of those strange humours
of experience out of which we get special satisfaction. I, who, while a
university student forty years previously in England, had received from
Mr. Dwight Moody, who had never himself been to any university, a
spiritual impetus which was still influencing my reactions to life, was
offered a university degree by the college at Middlebury, Vermont, by
Mr. Moody's son, who holds the position of its widely revered President.
We had, however, as is not uncommon even among 'religious' persons, one
irreconcilable difference. He was too idealistic for a Labrador doctor,
and had decided to create me a 'Doctor of Divinity,' while I was adamant
in determining to wait until—well, a little later, when I expect to be
a better authority on that 'ology. With the grace of the Moody family,
that so well fits any protagonist for success, he deferred to my
superior wisdom in the matter, which accounts for yet another
qualification for a doctor of medicine who has never opened a book of
law, to adorn the position of an unpaid Justice of the Peace for our
Colony, with the sanctity of an eighth label—perhaps I ought to say
additional visa.' To receive the approbation of any national institution
is rightly or wrongly an encouragement. I was genuinely grateful to the
National Academy of Social Sciences, to the Corporation of the City of
Boston, Massachusetts, where I had residence, and to the Royal
Geographical Society of Great Britain, for their recognition.
Any man who loves courage and who saw anything of the Canadians in
France between 1914 and 1918 will realize how honoured I felt when
McGill University admitted to its fellowship a man working in the utmost
limits of Canada's far-flung territories. More than one visitor, rightly
or wrongly, has described Canada as the most Christian country in the
world to-day. Be that as it may, I had known some of its great political
leaders like Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the Honourable W. Mackenzie King, and
Sir Robert Borden; and I had truly felt, in spite of evil speaking and
the too common desire to belittle politicians, that leadership such as
theirs made anyone proud of a closer link with that great country.
When I learned that General Sir Arthur Currie, successful man of
business, even more successful military leader, and equally praised
everywhere as a great educational head, was to confer this new token of
brotherhood, I hoped it was because the men who worked in earth's
centres realized how we in the wilds need new supports to carry on
effectively, and that they would regard our acceptance of their
generosity in that light, and not as if it were taken as a new feather
in a bantam's tail.
All these events are recorded here at the risk of being misunderstood;
but I want to protest that the gift of the Fellowship of the Royal
College of Surgeons of England, the membership of the Royal Society of
Medicine, the Fellowship of the College of Surgeons of America, and
other generous and infinitely appreciated honours, are of real value, of
spiritual value. Those who regard life as I do, as a field of honour, do
not like isolation for its own sake, any more than a sailor loves being
drowned simply because he is 'accustomed to it.' These gifts all help
you to help others. They bring you in touch with new personalities from
whom otherwise you could never draw inspiration. Moreover, in the world
as it is to-day, they are of immense value in securing you a hearing if
you do want to say anything, and a clientele if you write anything with
a purpose. To seek to be called 'Rabbi' is one thing. To refuse to
accept the gift of a real 'talent' may be only a symptom of snobbery or
of fear.
Therefore, I purposely include in this record a most sincere
appreciation of honours that were never sought, but which have done for
me and mine exactly that which love does whenever and in whatever form
it is manifested. It has brought help to me through these human
expressions of goodwill, and the consciousness of a sustaining force,
which I know is the greatest that the world can give anyone. Volunteer
service, kindly hospitality, monetary contributions, human encouragement
were all essential in proportion to our faith and courage, and are all
undeniably expressions of the 'greatest thing in the world.' Such have
all these red-letter days in my life been to me. I have profoundly
thanked God for every one of them. Anyone who does not believe this can
offer me another such opportunity, and let him see how much of a
sacrifice I would be willing to make in order to come and receive it.
Only when it has been physically impossible have I refused. I try to
regard myself as a Christian and to that extent socialist; but bred far
too deep in my flesh and blood is a respect for and appreciation of the
world's intelligentsia to permit me for one moment to let anyone think I
do not always look upon them as the 'men entrusted with ten talents.'
One of those days I shall always regard as particularly memorable,
because, as the years have gone by since it dawned and closed, I have
been able to see what it has meant to the people among whom I have lived
and to the work I have set myself to achieve. It was the day when our
Governor, the late Sir William Allardyce, a man I had known and learned
to love and honour so well for his services to the world, the
representative of His Majesty the King, was to come away down to St.
Anthony to open our first modern, concrete, fire-proof, thoroughly
equipped hospital in the North. This hospital is manned by a surgeon in
charge, Dr. Charles Curtis, who has earned for it the A1 rating of the
American College of Surgeons. We rejoice to feel that it, like our other
hospitals, gives to the fishermen that which we ourselves would demand
as the best translation of love for a neighbour, in our professional
line of work. How I wished that Dr. John Mason Little, of Boston, whose
ashes lie in the hill-side above the old hospital and whose love and
skill through many years had helped so much to make it possible, could
have been visibly with us to share in the happiness of that great
occasion!
The twenty-fifth of July 1927 was the day selected. His Majesty's
frigate _Wistaria_ was specially detailed to convey His Excellency
direct from the capital. A special trip of a local steamer, the _Silver
City_, had been arranged to bring Admiral Sir James Startin, who came
from England to represent that branch of the Mission, and a number of
representatives from Canada and the United States, from the nearest
point of the railway a hundred and fifty miles farther south. The
Newfoundland Government also sent Judge Morris to represent them.
In the _Strathcona II_ we were to return from our first Western Labrador
trip of the season, two days before the great event, in order to have
plenty of time for making due arrangements. We had been at Harrington
Hospital, our Canadian Hospital, near Anticosti, and were running east
down the Gulf of St. Lawrence. We had collected a few patients to take
back with us, amongst them an elderly blind fisherman. Dense fog shut
down on us before we had picked up the one and only landmark on the
hundreds of islands among which lay our next port of call. Suddenly,
while I was myself at the wheel, we had that awful feeling of being
pitched forward like an arrow from the bow, the horrid noise I knew only
too well of 'ru-up, ru-up,' our keel glissading over the ice-smoothed
top of a submerged rock—then for a moment our little craft stopped and
shivered, before over she went sideways, in about five feet of water on
the reef, our draft being a good nine. No bottom was to be seen. Our
angle was so acute that we on the bridge were nearly pitched over the
side, which lay well under water. Worst of all, we had no notion what
ledge we could have struck. To save the fire-box top and bottom of the
boiler, and so prevent an explosion, the engineers at once drew the fire
and let the steam off as rapidly as possible. The rest of us with great
difficulty got the port boat clear of the lee rigging. When the patients
had been huddled into it and it was held clear of the vessel, we slid
our starboard boat over the bilge of the _Strathcona_ into the water,
and hauling her round to the bow got an anchor into her and rowed it out
some thirty fathoms, hoping we might perhaps haul the ship out into deep
water. While the men were doing this, however, the water in the hold
increased so rapidly that, when I climbed down into my own stateroom to
get some papers, my bed was already under water. This made us think
there must be a hole through her side; indeed we could hear the water
pouring in. It seemed foolish, therefore, to try and float her off the
rock, and we decided to leave her where she was brought up, so that if
we could find land in the fog and get back to her next day, we might at
least salve some of her properties. We were forced, therefore, to give
orders to abandon her, and rigging up her compass in the second boat, I
told each man to salve what he could quickly and bring it along to the
boat. In spite of our unfortunate plight we all had to smile when the
last man, our engineer, climbed aboard with a looking-glass and an
umbrella. It was raining and he had pictured a barren rock to sit on.
The skipper's duty was to lead, so we started off due north, ordering
the other boat to keep us in sight. The fog, however, was thicker than
ever, and in a very few minutes we lost sight of each other. Our small
foghorn brought no answer from the second boat. Suddenly a sound broke
faintly upon the stillness. Then it got louder. It was a bell ringing!
At last we located the direction and thought we recognized it as the
_Strathcona's_ own bell! To our amazement, when at last the source of
the noise loomed up through the darkness, we found we were not mistaken.
There lay the _Strathcona_—afloat! To be sure, she was very deep in the
water, but afloat, and our other boat alongside. It did not take us long
to clamber aboard her. The mate explained that, just as the wreck was
disappearing from view, he heard the bell ring. He took little notice
the first time, as he knew he must be mistaken. But suddenly it rang
more loudly, and longer, as if the staunch little _Strathcona_ had made
up her mind at the last moment that she could not bear to be left alone
to her fate. Turning back at once, they were just in time to see a
heavier sea than any of the previous waves come along and lift our
beloved craft clean over the reef into deep water beyond. The surface of
the rock was well ice-scrubbed and smooth, so the little steamer just
slid off it, as if she were being launched again. They had begun ringing
the bell again for us as soon as ever they got aboard, and already had
begun bailing, armed with buckets.
It seemed like bailing the Atlantic with a teaspoon, but at last we
really did begin to note progress, while we all, even the blind patient,
kept at our task with an endless chain of buckets. Eventually we
succeeded in so lowering the level of water in the hold that the fires
could be relit and enough steam raised to drive the donkey pump. It was
evident at last that the boat was leaking very little; and it
subsequently turned out that the water we heard rushing in was pouring
through the coal bunker lids, which were under water as she lay over on
the rock. With increasing steam we were able to keep the foghorn going
and to get the vessel running ahead while we worked. Suddenly, to our
great joy, a large motor fishing-boat with half a dozen old friends
crossed our bow, having been attracted by the horn, and in less than an
hour we were safely anchored between half a dozen schooners alongside
our friend who had found us. He was known to us all as 'the King of the
Dog Islands,' as for many years he had been regarded as the greatest
fish-catcher among those dangerous shoals.
The internal economy of the _Strathcona_ needed such drastic
rearrangement that we were too busy that night to worry over what might
have been. The fog held on and the chance of reaching St. Anthony in
time for the opening of the hospital seemed small indeed. We were not
leaking badly, and our only hope lay in putting out to sea and taking a
risk. Everyone was willing to make the attempt, so with two motor boats
to pilot us out, one on each bow, we wriggled out south again between
the rocks, till we had a safe offing and a good clear course to steer.
It was 'touch and go,' but the little boat never responded better; and
having safely negotiated the north-east tip of Newfoundland, we crept
alongshore on the Atlantic side and hobbled in to St. Anthony just
before the Governor's arrival.
The excitement in the village was at its peak when next morning the
warship anchored off our dock and we were given the standing orders for
the day. Our company of Girl Guides, the most northerly in the world,
was drawn up on the wharf under their able commander, to be reviewed by
Lady Allardyce, who has been much interested, with her husband, in that
movement in other parts of His Majesty's Dominions. The real spice of
the review of all these 'troops' which the North could muster lay in the
fact that His Excellency had once been Governor of the Falklands, and
had himself bade good-bye to Admiral Sturdee just before he surprised
and destroyed the German Pacific fleet there, and so helped to wipe out
the sting to England's pride of the sinking of our own ships just
previously.
Everything went well. As all the work of building and installing the
equipment had been done by our own boys, we were justly proud when there
was no short circuit when the lights were turned on, no leak or flooding
in the plumbing, and from the moment when the front door was opened by
His Excellency, no one found any flaw in any of the departments. The
same day a large marble memorial to all our lads who had fallen in the
War was unveiled. So beautiful a tablet, the gift of the Governor of
Vermont, had never been seen by our people. When I turned back, after
the crowd had gone, to have another look at it, I found a poor woman,
mother of one of the boys who had laid down his life, silently weeping
in front of it.
It is our custom each year in July to hold a memorial service on the
cliff-top over the old hospital where Dr. John Little served so long. On
two poles, the flags of America and England are hauled up side by side,
and then the simple service of prayer and praise is held under the open
sky among the green trees, and a challenge given for all of us to profit
by the memory of our friend and his ideals.
It occurred to me that it would be a help to our people to have an
Admiral, who had sunk a large U-boat submarine from a fishing trawler
with a little three-pounder gun when ordered to surrender, take part in
the service, so when the moment came I called on him to offer the
prayer. There was some slight delay before the Admiral got started, but
then it was a real direct petition of a simple business-like sailor. It
is not betraying any confidence to say that afterward the Admiral told
me he felt it harder to respond, when I suddenly called upon him, than
if another big submarine had signalled him to come and be sunk!
It was also on this to us great occasion of the opening of our first
fireproof and absolutely modern hospital by the Governor, that His
Excellency told me he had received a cable from His Majesty the King,
creating me a Knight Commander of the ancient Order of Saint Michael and
Saint George. I had been told that in accepting any kind of a title of
distinction a dividing wall would be raised, like an international
tariff, between myself and those by whom I wanted nothing better than to
be considered as a brother. I have not found it so. We do not love Sir
Lancelot any less for his title, or even Saint George for his even more
ambitious sobriquet. Those are not the things which make or mar love. It
is possible to query the value of hereditary titles, but for centuries
our family have been Cornish folk, reared on Arthurian tales and the
atmosphere of the Round Table. It was as natural to accept the 'golden
spurs' as it would have seemed both unpatriotic and snobbish to refuse
so generous a recognition of our work by the Sovereign. As a matter of
fact, it has greatly pleased our friends and our people; and if only as
a testimonial to the wide knowledge and practical interest in our work
on the part of one of the last of the hereditary monarchs of Europe, it
will ever be the crown of the happy memories of that day that our work
was thought worthy of notice by the busy Sovereign of so vast an Empire.
A year or so later, out of the blue the morning mail brought me another
undeserved temptation. It was to run as a candidate for the Lord
Rectorship of St. Andrews, the oldest university in Scotland. In our
home there was a picture which had always fascinated me. It was of a
terribly religious-looking Scotch divine with a large Bible under his
arm, gazing from the top of a sand-dune at two elders playing the Royal
and Ancient game on a Sunday at St. Andrews. These temptable
'grown-ups,' and in Scotland at that, had often been a comfort in my
moments of discouragement. This tiny link which the picture made had
always endeared St. Andrews to me, though the sport of which it is the
shrine and Mecca had always in youth been too sedate a form of
competition to be of much lure to me.
Anyhow, I 'fell for' this new temptation, in spite of the fact that the
review of my qualifications for a rector convinced me that I was about
as well fitted for it as for occupying the Papal throne. A timid enquiry
as to what opponent I might expect to try to demolish settled the
question. The heritage of a sporting spirit has not been silenced by the
trammels of life in Labrador. My opponent was to be a peer of the realm,
one of the widest-known men of wealth, of action, and of philanthropy.
We have tried to make our credo, 'When two paths are open, always take
the more venturesome,' so, acknowledging my deep appreciation of the
extraordinary honour conferred upon a Labrador general practitioner of
medicine, I metaphorically forwarded my glove to be thrown into the
arena, or the dunes, or Lord Melchett's back yard, or wherever the best
people do throw those bouquets. Men of such great distinction as Sir
James Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, Dr. Nansen, and a long line of that ilk,
had been the occupants of this famous chair, and incidentally, of the
actual cap and gown in which John Knox himself had first shed lustre on
the office.
The ability of tomatoes to carry at least thirty per cent of their
vitamins unharmed through the grilling of the canning process had long
forced us in Labrador to appreciate their value. We had even had a
tomato campaign and stored every year cases of them in tins for our
child-welfare work, until we actually began to grow fresh ones under
glass, convinced of their immense value, with cod-liver oil, for
tuberculosis. An imposing letter which we received one morning revealed,
however, a new service they had rendered. It informed me that I had won,
by a majority of one hundred and fifty-six votes, and it was understood
that overripe tomatoes had played an important part in the election,
some wag hoping that I should consider it a red-letter day!
When the time came for the rectorial speech, I had not descended from
the train before an avalanche, a cyclone, and a thunderstorm broke
simultaneously over us, and we were swept, with the Principal of the
University and two representatives of the student body, into an ancient
vehicle of transportation of early-Victorian vintage. The elements
thereupon assumed the form of as healthy, handsome, and hilarious a
crowd of youthful Highlanders as ever one could wish to see. In
Labrador, the Eskimos long ago taught the settlers to harness up large
dogs as motive power for the sledges; but in St. Andrews we discovered
that it is still the custom for the students to harness themselves.
The opportunity thus to be seen driving round town with the Principal of
the University reminded me vividly of a story President Hadley of Yale
once told me. As he was walking down the road one day, a stranger in a
dogcart stopped and offered to give him a lift. When the man had driven
him to his destination by a very circuitous route, the President in
thanking him asked why it was he had so kindly invited him.
'Well,' replied the stranger, 'you see, Mr. President, I owe a little
money in this town.'
I wondered what would have been the effect in a Scotch town if I had
needed credit!
Saint Andrew was a fisherman. He is the fishermen's saint, as well as
the saint of this soundest of educational establishments, which has
consistently regarded its challenge as being not merely to equip its
students with up-to-date current information in all branches of
learning, but primarily to send them into the world inspired men and
women. It is not too much to say it has been a vital factor in
maintaining all that Scotland stands for.
If the avalanche at the station overwhelmed my body, so I myself was
overwhelmed by the consciousness of all that St. Andrews students had
done for the world in the days gone by, so much so that it would have
been invidious to name anyone in particular. Though a mere 'Sassenach,'
I was wholeheartedly able to testify to what I had seen Scotchmen giving
back to the great and needy world in its farthest-off outposts, so many
of which it had been my privilege in life to visit. Truly, its _alumni_
carry the spirit of their patron saint all over the world.
As long as the spirit of St. Andrews University is a guiding influence
in that land, as long as Saint Andrew, the fishermen's saint, is also
its real patron, no one need fear for what Scotland will continue to
give the world in the days to come.
The recent magnificent improvements in the equipment and buildings of
St. Andrews were but one more tribute to Sir James Irvine, Principal of
the University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society because of his
discoveries in research chemistry. These discoveries, however, had been
just a side issue of his greater contributions to his day and generation
through his directorship of this fine educational centre. That a great
American philanthropist, Edward Harkness, should have contributed ten
million dollars to be spent for Britain's benefit is remarkable in
itself. That he should have chosen a Scotch University Principal to be
one of the chief members of the very small administrative committee for
spending the sum was in itself an indication of the well-merited esteem
in which Sir James Irvine is held in the world to-day.
CHAPTER XXVII
SERVICE ON THE LABRADOR
BEFORE a worker comes to Labrador, we never ask him what creed he holds.
I can know all that is necessary about that after he has worked on the
Coast. There is no record of the Great Master asking Judas for his
intellectual opinion before sending him out to preach the Gospel in
service.
'Wop' is the name which the volunteers gave themselves, as a terse
synonym for a worker willing to do anything, but not a past master at
any particular job. It is a euphonious term, 'snappy' and modern.
Not a few of my critics have reminded me that a good many of our 'wops,'
in common with the rest of humanity, have had faults. I wish someone
would expend the same zeal in pointing out any human being who has not
had any.
My first three 'wops' were English. One of these saved two people's
lives by diving through the ice after them into the polar current, a
service which nearly cost him his life. Both these lads worked hard and
paid their own expenses to boot. They worked so well, indeed, that after
a long winter, in spite of frost and snow, they had erected and started
a steam lumber mill. After that, we did not even listen to our critics,
feeling a little surer of our ground. The brother of our next 'wop' was
an internationally known surgeon and had wintered on our Coast. He felt
that in service for others lay his younger brother's only chance of
breaking his bonds. No alcoholic beverage has ever been allowed in our
work. We have difficulties enough without adding to them wittingly.
After three years of service on the Labrador Coast, this 'wop' returned
to business a renewed man, except for the ineffaceable scars which the
toxin of alcohol leaves. Others followed, so that our venture proved to
be double-barrelled. Nervous breakdown patients, like those suffering
from other forms of loss of the spirit's control over the body,
responded also to the 'Labrador treatment.' One or two objected to our
telling the local people of their ailments and so enlisting their help
as well; but for us to be consistent that was necessary. Moreover, such
candour called out valuable traits among the fishermen, who are always
sympathetic.
[Illustration: CONCRETE HOSPITAL AT ST. ANTHONY]
[Illustration: A WARD IN ST. ANTHONY HOSPITAL]
One does not wish to convey the impression, however, that any
appreciable percentage of volunteers who have been with us on the Coast
have come because they felt they needed our help to master some
difficulty in their lives. As a matter of fact, over fourteen hundred
'wops' have come 'down North,' while at least twice that number have had
to be refused, with Labrador's grateful thanks, since we were unable to
arrange for them.
These young men and young women have not despised any sort of work. They
have come from every rank of society, the sons and daughters of
millionaires co-operating with those who have worked their way to
Labrador.
One of our nurses, when asked why she was leaving, replied quite simply,
'To earn more money in order to be able to volunteer again.' A teacher,
in order to make her term of service possible, ran a private tea-shop
which specialized in doughnuts; and she has remained eight years on the
proceeds. To us this seems incontrovertible evidence of the potential
value of the humblest!
Many and varied have been the devices to which these young people have
resorted in order to make their journey possible when the family
exchequer has not been sufficiently elastic to do it for them. I
particularly remember a young medical student who, when I asked him if
he were going to be able to join us, said it depended on how many
puppies his spaniel dog produced, as he was counting on the proceeds of
the sale of these 'friends of all the world' for his journey!
Another young lady, who is on the Coast at the present moment, financed
the help which she is giving to the Labrador by selling her charming
paintings. She managed even in these days of depression (and I am
writing in 1932) to sell enough to enable her to give us a year's
voluntary service.
One is often asked, how ever we managed to persuade so many to join us
when the world is in financial difficulties and there is no money
remuneration to be expected. My answer is always that that in itself is
the reason. If you tell the young people of to-day that the work is hard
enough, and the circumstances of life are trying, and the food is not
too good, and the journey north is apt to be terribly fatiguing, and the
conditions of life are, for toughness, such as they have never
experienced before, they will all jump at the chance to help. Whereas,
if one were to offer them the job of rolling a perambulator down
Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, even at a tempting rate of remuneration,
they would be certain to refuse.
As I have recorded elsewhere, when I bought the little hospital steamer
_Strathcona II_ at Southampton, all my sceptical friends in England and
in America as well told me, 'You will never be able to pay anybody to
take that "rowboat" across the North Atlantic.' That might be perfectly
true. But I had no intention of even trying to hire anybody, because I
was certain that there were those who, perhaps, had no money to give,
but could do that, and would want to do it without any payment; and such
proved to be the case.
On another occasion, when in need of nurses, I went to the Massachusetts
General Hospital, with many qualms as to what success I should have in
luring them away from so attractive an environment. I told them the
following story of one of their own nurses who had been serving with us
on the Coast a year or so before.
One spring, a telegram came from a hamlet about sixty miles to the
southward, asking me to come at once, as there was an outbreak in the
village of a very fatal type of influenza. Unfortunately, I could not
go, since I could not leave the hospital. However, one of my nurses
offered to make the attempt, so we wired the village to send a team of
dogs for her.
A fortnight later an urgent telegram came from her asking for help. One
of the fishermen, delirious from high fever, had escaped from his
cottage in the night and gone down to his fish-stage. There he got hold
of a fish-splitting knife, and, apparently finding no codfish available,
had ripped himself up. (Oddly enough, he was known as a dexterous
splitter.) Shortly after, sobered by his experience, he actually walked
into the cottage where the nurse was, carrying his intestines, none of
which he had injured with the knife.
Meantime, the rivers were all open and dog-team travel had become
impossible, while the sea-ice was so broken up that no one could make
the journey from hospital to her by water. All one could do was to wire
her simple directions, and urge her to 'do her best.' Six weeks later,
we saw a long trap-boat forcing her way into the harbour, covered by a
tent with a funnel through it, as if she were a small steamer. Out of it
on to the ice climbed the nurse, followed by her patient, who was by
that time on the road to recovery.
She told us that the priest had consented to help her operate, provided
he gave the patient the Viaticum first. As soon as this last rite was
administered, the little nurse produced the chloroform from her
maternity kitbag. The good priest, who had never been present at an
operation before, then gave the patient the anaesthetic, while the
nurse, who, in her turn, had never performed an operation of any kind,
washed out the abdominal cavity with buckets of boiled water, and having
rearranged the insides the best she could, sewed the wound partially up
to prevent infection. Her courage and ability, her meticulous care of
the patient, together with his sound constitution, saved the man's life.
He completely recovered, and that same autumn was fishing once again for
the support of his family.
When I had finished recounting this story, half the nurses in the
hospital wanted to go to Labrador on the next boat!
Another volunteer, though merely an undergraduate, seeing a dire need
for some place in which to house our collection of derelict children,
built a home at his own expense, and subsequently doubled the size of it
when the need increased.
Yet another, a poor carpenter, came at his own expense all the way from
Kentucky to teach us how to make looms and weaving apparatus in wood. It
was just after the War, when carpenters were getting twelve to fourteen
dollars a day. I had honestly never expected to see any carpenter,
except Him of Galilee, make such a sacrifice willingly.
Another piece of work stands out in my mind for its high idealism. A boy
had come to help me put up a small industrial centre at Seal Islands, in
the middle of a group of very poor people. He was by no means a rich
boy, and was rejoicing that he had been fortunate enough to secure a
remunerative position for the early autumn, which he needed to help him
pay his way at the university. It was very late in the season when I
came back from the North that year, and on anchoring in Rogues' Roost,
as their harbour is called, was amazed to find he had not gone home.
'I had not finished the job you gave me,' was his explanation. He was
not being paid one penny, and he lost his post in the States by staying
so long on the Coast, but I am sure that to-day he would be the first to
say that he had been the gainer by his devotion to his ideal.
Another 'wop' came and cooked for twenty-one workmen all summer. He
will, I know, forgive me for saying that we had good reason afterward to
know that it was no special addiction to the occupation of cooking that
induced him to give up a European trip for that experience.
Volunteers come for short or for long terms of service. Often they have
returned again and again, as they had the time and funds. They have come
from the United States, Canada, and the British Isles, from
Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand. They have included professors
of exact sciences, such as mathematics, surgeons, physicians and
specialists, engineers (one, a coloured skilled civil engineer from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came with two white American
college graduates), architects, lawyers, army officers, librarians,
industrial workers, teachers, nurses, and 'sub' and 'post' debutantes.
Indeed, it would be easier to begin at the other end, and list those,
such as gangsters, bootleggers, or other social outlaws, as not being
included in our lists. To me the members of this long procession of
helpers have always appeared as modern prototypes of the Canterbury
Pilgrims.
As I think over the splendid help which this cross-section of society
has rendered us, I realize that it is impossible to do justice to them
by name. Perhaps that is exactly the greatest service they could render
us—the very fact that they do not wish for any reparations or even
recognition, and instead that they have invariably insisted that they
received more than they gave.
The building of the big reservoir and laying the pipe lines six feet
deep in the rocky ground at St. Anthony for half a mile, and the even
more difficult construction of the water-supply at Cartwright, amidst
swamp, dense tuckamore above ground and roots, mud, conglomerate clay,
and solid rock below ground, day after day, amidst hordes of mosquitoes
and black flies, which do not even give you notice of their arrival, but
charge with 'spears in rest' like mediaeval knights, were both completed
by 'wops' known to all of us, who successfully accomplished these and
many other such 'sermons in stones.' Many buildings have been
constructed, and innumerable vessels unloaded by them. On one occasion a
steamer brought us four hundred tons of coal. The skipper, who had no
use for young 'missionaries,' told us we had three days to unload, and
that there would be a heavy daily demurrage charge for delaying his
steamer, adding, 'And I'm not giving any days on trust!' The boys
determined to do it, even with their very imperfect tools; and much to
the surprise of our friend the skipper, they 'put it over' with time to
spare. However, they had not kept to eight or even twelve hours a day. I
asked one rather delicate-looking 'wop' how he had kept awake.
'I didn't keep awake. I sat on the coat exactly under the derrick, and
every time the bucket came down it hit me on the head, and I woke up and
filled it, and then went to sleep again.'
This reminds me to say that they have carried their fine spirit home
with them, and when I arrived once in Boston, the secretary, herself a
'woppess,' told me some Harvard boys who had been on the Coast had just
finished painting the inside of the office, at a time when painters were
getting twelve dollars a day.
From the _alumni_ have come many of our directors. I shall never forget
leaving Albert Gound, then a student from Bowdoin, anchored off an
outside headland in the North Atlantic in a small open boat, with her
only mast gone and no oars, while I went in and visited a sick man. When
I returned, he had drifted away before the strong offshore breeze. He
has repaid me by becoming Chairman of our New England Grenfell
Association and by untold help both on the Coast and in Boston.
Then, too, all our friends know Ted Greene, whom we left when a
volunteer from Amherst on the North Newfoundland coast, on the very
island to which the survivors of the _Viking_ escaped when the boat blew
up in the ice-fields. Later, when he was one of the clergy at the famous
Brick Church on Fifth Avenue and one of our most active directors on the
International Grenfell Association, he came to Labrador to visit us on
the _Strathcona_. We missed him by a few minutes at each rendezvous.
Finally, we were obliged to leave him behind altogether. About this he
made not even a mention until we discovered our terrible _faux pas_;
which is only one of ten thousand little things that make one listen
with more readiness to what such heroes say to us.
At Conche, a lonely little settlement on the north-east coast of
Newfoundland, the nurse sent out there by the Grenfell Association lives
in a room in the village. One day, at the beginning of winter, the
nurse's attention was called to the plight of a man who was very ill—so
ill that the nurse knew at once that the only thing that could possibly
save him would be an operation. There was no doctor and no hospital
nearer than St. Anthony, the headquarters of the Mission, over forty
miles away. It was, at that time, impossible to reach St. Anthony by
sea; and the journey by land, over high hills and across dreary
stretches of snow and ice, seemed almost as impracticable. However, a
'woman box' was speedily ready, a willing band of men volunteered to
draw the sledge, as it was too much of an undertaking for a dog-team,
and the party set off.
The journey took five and a half days, the nurse tending the sick man
whenever they stopped to take rest. Through cold, hardship, and danger
the patient was brought safe and alive to St. Anthony Hospital. An
operation was performed immediately and the life of that man was saved.
The thought of the return journey worried the nurse not a little. It
happened that the owner of an aeroplane was in St. Anthony that day, on
work connected with the seal fishery, and, hearing the story of the sick
man who had been brought from Conche, he sought out the plucky little
nurse and offered to take her back by air. She sent a wire to her people
at Conche and, when she arrived back, it was to find all the inhabitants
assembled in prayer, in the open, awaiting the return of their nurse
from the sky. Her return journey had taken twenty minutes.
The 'wops' at the home end of the line also have been of immense help.
They have organized sales, given lantern lectures, brought out Northern
students for education, and brought in new 'wops.' Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton now have their own Grenfell Alumni Associations. Boys from
Yale financed, built, and support Yale School, at North-West River.
Princeton boys are helping us in the same way at St. Mary's. Harvard
boys have undertaken to raise the expenses of the _Strathcona_. That
university even furnished us again last summer with a volunteer cook, a
man of marvellous application and undiscourageable perseverance. We gave
him his 'H' for cooking. It is a real risk to have a volunteer cook,
especially when one asks him in the galley if he is cooking anything for
dinner, and he replies, 'This galley is not a place for cooking. It is a
place for opening tins.'
Farmington School is forever endeared to us for having given us a
sailoress secretary, who is 'never never sick at sea,' and is a member
of our family—Miss Eleanor Cushman, of New Bedford whaling ancestry.
She is better known and loved as 'the Sphinx,' a sobriquet acquired, as
she rarely stops talking! She never stops working either, and the debt
which we and Labrador owe her can never be repaid.
Miss Mary Hillard and Westover School have given us magnificent helpers
and help. To mention one thing only, if one were to call at many small
Labrador settlements in summer, one might suppose Westover had come down
in a body, so many of the young girls of the village having earned
discarded uniforms of that school, in such excellent repair that the
great puzzle to the recipients has always been how it is we came by
them.
One famous athlete, who wore out his nether garments working on the
pipe-line excavation, had to purchase some 'shorts' at the clothing
store. To our great amusement, he came back with a pair of his own,
which apparently his mother had included in a donation!
The Ward Belmont School in Tennessee, at Nashville, the town where Lady
Grenfell's father lived and from which he went out to fight in the Civil
War, sends us every year the salary of the occupational therapist. The
Emma Willard School of Troy, New York, gives us the expenses of the head
of the Orphanage. Several _alumni_ keep small branches going in their
neighbourhood. Two 'wops' at least have been artists, and have greatly
helped us with designs, Christmas cards, and pictures.
Three of our 'wops' have brought us meretricious fame by taking part in
the Byrd South Pole Expedition, Norman Vaughan and Edward Goodale
driving dogs, and taking some of our huskies, which they had driven in
the North. Indeed, we were honoured by the leading dog being named 'Sir
Wilfred.' Dr. Hilton Willcox went as deck-hand, and in the terrible,
mountainous seas south of Magellan, also carried the torch high by
proving to be a fearless 'yardarm reefer' in a gale.
One of our local clergymen, who was leaving the Labrador for Japan,
relieved us of a tiny new-born baby, whose mother, an Eskimo, had
wandered south into one of our hospitals to die all alone in giving
birth to her baby. Eskimos are Japanese or Mongolian, and when later our
friend sent me a coloured photograph of the baby at five years of age in
a kimono and swinging an umbrella, none of us but would have dubbed her
a veritable daughter of the Land of the Rising Sun.
Many good 'woppesses' have done splendid work in child welfare, in
teaching in almost every branch of work along our Coast. One has, after
many summers' service, built a school of her own, and almost reared the
whole colony of children of the village, she herself being a Professor
and a Ph.D. Another lady came several summers to teach organized games.
Another came to be a village story-teller to get people interested in
taking out books from our travelling and stationary libraries.
One of our oldest and dearest friends, Miss Harriot Houghteling, married
Dr. Charles Curtis, so we have her permanently on the Coast, where her
presence is a bonanza. Education had been one of her chief interests;
and she has added to the school, brought special teachers, provided
outfit and wherewithal to teach domestic science, food preservation, and
other invaluable activities.
Another volunteer, Miss Dorothy Stirling, built a most beautiful cottage
which has been of great use to us ever since. She also gave to the
Grenfell Association a wonderful root cellar costing two thousand
dollars, to protect all the vegetables which we must store through our
winters, as well as contributing generously in money and time to
numerous other activities of our work. She is still acting as voluntary
head of the Chicago Grenfell Association. Another volunteer at her own
expense kept a nurse at a new nursing station, while the local people
provided the nurse's board and lodging. Being a Roman Catholic village,
this splendid little nurse was imported direct from Dublin and did no
end of good work.
Year after year, 'woppesses' have been carrying on the industrial shops
with very great profit to that branch of the Labrador activities and
have been doing the business and office work, and the daily round of the
clothing department. Several adventuresome volunteers have commandeered
trucks and driven about to various resorts in the United States, holding
sales. This has been done for four summers, and one winter trip through
Florida.
Long service consecutively is always hard to secure. Some seem to find
the northern climate difficult to contend with for protracted periods.
Miss Murray, Miss Criswell, Miss Carlson, Miss Helen Smith have each
been on the Coast to the great profit of the fishermen for many years.
Miss Frances Baier, Miss Macleod, Miss Bateman, and other fine teachers
have raised our chief school at St. Anthony to a position where it has
been recognized by the Government of Newfoundland as offering the
highest educational standards. Miss Luther, Miss Laura Young, Miss
Catherine Cleveland, and Miss Pressley-Smith have a continuing memorial
to their service in our fine Industrial Department.
Several of our former volunteers have joined our home offices as members
of our permanent staff. Chief among these is Miss Katie Spalding, who
gave us ten years of entirely voluntary service on the Labrador as head
of our largest orphanage—a task so exhausting to nerves and patience
that only a person with the unselfishness, the devotion, the high order
of intelligence, and the saving sense of humour of Miss Spalding could
possibly have coped with it for so long. When the need of opening a
separate office of the International Grenfell Association in London
became imperative, we realized that, in order to make this venture a
success, we needed Miss Spalding vitally at that post. We asked her,
therefore, if she would be willing to substitute for her work among the
children on the Coast this more prosaic task of fostering a continuous
progressive interest, on behalf of the Labrador fishermen, among the
people of the British Isles. It was a sacrifice to ask of her, but she
stepped into that breach without a murmur. For years now she has been
the volunteer head of the Grenfell Association of Great Britain and
Ireland. Thanks in large measure to her, that Association has been of
increasing value to the fishermen and children of the North, whom she
has loved and helped for twenty years.
Our Ottawa, Boston, and New York offices all have as their guiding
spirits former workers on the Coast. We always say with pardonable pride
that the strongest credential of the Labrador work is the fact that its
keenest protagonists are those who have the most intimate knowledge of
it.
Dr. Joseph Andrews, the famous surgeon who for eighteen years came north
each summer at his own expense and gave sight to more blind than are
recorded in the Four Gospels, now sleeps near his beautiful California
home. We like to feel that his spirit, like that of Dr. John Little, is
still among the simple fishermen whom he served. It is good to remember
how Dr. Andrews told us that the happiest moment of the year was that in
which he received a wire from me, saying, 'The winter ice is breaking
up. You can start for the Coast.'
Neither the Labrador nor I can ever hope to repay the debt which we owe
to such men as Dr. Charles Curtis, whose unselfishness, high abilities,
and courage in the face of the ever-recurrent problems of our biggest
and most important station are beyond praise; or of Dr. Harry Paddon,
whose years of untiring devotion to his most northerly section of our
work at Indian Harbour and North-West River speak for themselves. The
fruits of their labours, which these men see to-day in their districts,
must be some compensation to them for the undoubted sacrifices which
their lives have called for.
We rejoice that Dr. Moret, our splendid colleague at St. Mary's River,
who has built up that district with the help of the Princeton boys, has
this year joined forces with another of our much-loved volunteers, Miss
Charlotte Cheston, who had given several summers' service on the Coast
in the Industrial Department.
We sincerely miss the presence on the Coast of Mr. and Mrs. Blackburn,
whose devoted services and many-sided abilities will never be forgotten
in St. Anthony. It is safe to say that no one can quite fill Mrs.
Blackburn's place in the hearts of the women of St. Anthony.
The loss of Varick Frissell by the explosion in the S.S. _Viking_, which
was sunk and burned in the ice-fields, was a splendid tribute to the
'wop' spirit. Himself a lover of his fellow-men, he had helped us in a
thousand ways during many years. To him we owe the Yale School at
North-West River, and no small portion of the dam and water-supply at
St. Anthony. He took the first moving pictures of the marvellous Grand
Falls of Labrador; and also became a member of our Council. On one
occasion he had driven us all over New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and
from San Diego to Portland, Oregon. As he was driving back alone, a
Mexican revolution having broken out, he secured passes from both sides
in order to get pictures. He was stopped by a dozen uniformed men ten
miles over the line and, showing the wrong pass, he was arrested. The
soldiers crowded into the car and ordered him to drive, when without a
moment's hesitation he carried them over the International line into the
United States, where all were interned.
His last work was to make a film which would go out all over the world
to show the public some of the hardships of our people's lives. In the
spring of 1931, in the sealing steamer _Viking_, he was finishing the
film; when one Sunday night, far out in the ice-fields off North
Newfoundland, the magazine blew up, and Varick Frissell was never seen
again. His dog, a large Newfoundland, always slept on his bed and used
to kiss him good-night. It had accompanied him on all his journeys. When
the explosion occurred, it was lying between his feet under the table.
Apparently it was not killed, but some of the rescued reported that the
dog was presumably unable to live without his master, for they heard it
sending up a last lament as the ship was burning.
Varick's gentle unselfishness and unstinting work for others has left
behind him its lasting inspiration.
After the explosion Varick Frissell's companion, Henry Sargent, found
himself, half clad, lying in the darkness on the ice, the ship in
flames. Injured men were lying all about him. From the wreckage spread
around he rescued some clothing, a little food, a few pieces of the
doomed ship's timber (some of it on fire), and a dozen or so matches. He
himself was partially shocked, having been blown through the stern of
the ship. All night and all the next day and the following night he
drove out to sea on the ice-pan with his two injured men, whom he
covered and cared for as best he could. At one time the mass of the floe
jammed against the island five miles outside the great Cape. He did not
try to save his own life by escaping to the land, but stood by his
injured comrades. On the third day, when they were rescued, one of the
poor fellows had gone mad, and later died. The other man lost his legs
owing to severe frost-burns.
After the ship was blown up on that fateful Sunday evening, one of the
master watches found himself on the ice. All his group were soon
struggling to reach some islands a few miles distant. He was one of the
group which, having placed two badly injured men in the shattered
remains of a dory, were trying to drag them over very heavily rafted ice
to safety. The old boat broke up. Progress was impossible. All but the
master watch determined to make for land over the ice, regardless of the
wounded. He decided to stand by the stricken men, though the ice-field
was driving out to sea away from the islands.
Next afternoon, a searching party sent out from the islands sighted
them. A gallant attempt to rescue was made, but failed. Realizing the
hopelessness of their situation, the rescuers strongly urged the heroic
man to accompany them at least to temporary safety during the night,
confident as they were that he could never save his comrades. He only
replied, 'At least I can die with them.' England gave this splendid
fisherman its highest reward for courage, the Albert Medal.
That same night the steamer _Beothic_ nosed in toward the land and
sighted a man moving up and down on the ice. Though they were unable to
reach him, they put a dory with two lanterns on a large ice-pan to help
give him courage to hold out. When dawn broke, the master watch, having
secured the dory with its beacon lights and put his wounded men in it,
managed to bring them at last to safety.
For many years it has been the custom of the volunteers in New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia to hold, in the spring, reunion dinners of all
our _alumni_. The entertainments provided at these festivities are many
and varied. If it were not for Lady Grenfell and the Alumni Association
officers, it would be impossible to remember the names of all the
friends who share a common bond—the spirit of the lure of the Labrador.
Through the enthusiasm evoked at one of these dinners in New York, there
was formed one of the strongest links in the chain which binds the Coast
to the rest of the world—the Grenfell Alumni Association. A similar
enterprise is just starting in England. In it all workers share in
carrying on the message which they claim they learned on the Coast. To
the capable hands of Dr. Theodore L. Badger, one-time 'wop' and medical
assistant on the _Strathcona_, was entrusted the presidency. He has
greatly added to the debts which Labrador owes to him by the
strengthening of home ties. His contagious goodwill is characteristic of
all our volunteers—shall we call it _e pluribus unum_?
The work of the Industrial Department has been helped enormously by
years of volunteer work given by Miss Margaret Peirce. The splendid
success of the shop for the sale of Labrador products in Locust Street,
Philadelphia, is entirely due to her. Labrador women and children owe
her a debt they never can repay.
Every branch of the work owes our dear friends Miss Emily Fowler and
Mrs. Anderson Fowler gratitude for work extending over years, while to
Lady Grenfell and me their devoted friendship means more than we can
express. When the late Dr. Louis Stimson gave us his trans-Atlantic
racing yacht, the _Fleur-de-Lys_, for hospital work, Mrs. Fowler came
north in her, brought her doctor son, a specialist on throat work, and
gave a whole season of free service to Labrador.
No more true and constant friend of any mission enterprise do we know
than Mr. George Williams, of Farmington, who has visited Labrador every
summer over a period of fifteen years. A sportsman, he has in his own
yachts, one of which he freely presented to our work, visited every
fjord in Labrador, has fished in its principal rivers, and is known as a
friend and lover of all in trouble from Cape Chidley to Bonne Bay. Many
a fisherman to-day thinks this good friend missed his vocation—'Sure,
sir, that man should have been a fisherman.'
Once when starting for a lecture tour in England, I knew that the cost
of a chauffeur and a lanternist would diminish greatly the net gain to
the funds of the work. A young student of the University of
Pennsylvania, Mr. Herbert Threldkeld-Edwards, who had been a volunteer
on the Coast, offered his services free of expense. He drove us all over
the United Kingdom. He never let us down once in his self-imposed task,
and having paid his own expenses, took off his hat and said, 'Thank
you'! He, like numbers of our other 'wops,' has since seen service on
our Board of Directors.
Some of our best volunteer service has still to be mentioned, however.
No service has been done at more personal sacrifice than that of the
'wops' who have come on road-making, building, driving water-supplies,
building wharves, and erecting dams. When I have landed where a crew has
been working at those most exacting physical jobs in heavy boulder
clays, through dense old forest roots, beset by mosquitoes and black
flies innumerable, I have literally taken off my hat because I felt I
was upon holy ground. I can still see the Professor of Higher
Mathematics at Princeton, Professor Gillespie, stripped to the waist,
directing the present head of the department of religious literature of
Charles Scribner's Sons, another Princetonian, William Savage, now
chairman of our invaluable executive committee, how really to get down
through blue clay and gravel that had nearly become rock since it was
deposited. With his 'crew,' as did Hanson Baldwin, ex-naval officer, and
Bevan Pumphrey and his crowd next year, on the water-supply at
Cartwright he preached a sermon in idealism and the absolute naturalness
of Christian personal service and gave point to the conventional
homilies that should send home to every preacher a new view of what real
modernism in constructive theology stands for.
Service like this is a letting loose of the water of life itself, in the
unmistakable, uncriticizable, unsectarian way in which that tap must be
turned on, in deeds of love that cost the donor personal, unselfish
labour, if ever it is to confer on them the joys that the new
understanding of life gives, and on the recipients the assurance that
the words from any pulpit anywhere, however sincere and orthodox and
emotional, are any more than 'hot air.'
All our architect work has been volunteer, and the President of the
Institute of Architects of America and a member of the Legion of Honour
of Paris, who also has been on our Coast and on our board, is the guilty
party—Mr. William A. Delano. All our marine work, and it is far from
insignificant, and also our law advice ashore, have been freely given,
also by well-known men, members of our Council.
Our bankers, what shall I say of them? Like all the other services
rendered, from the giving of the widow's mite to the investing and
watching the funds, the responsibility of which has been entrusted by
confiding friends everywhere, the volunteer services for this work of
the bankers are absolutely basal. All these services are of God, and to
our voluntary bankers' professional services must be added hospitality,
accommodation, and invaluable advice, all freely given.
I could wish that any reader of this volume whose heart is anxious for
the future of our civilization, who in the dark clouds of to-day finds
fears and discouragements for the coming of the Kingdom of God
to-morrow, would read this chapter. If he still has any doubts that the
spirit of Christ lives in our own environment to-day as much as ever it
did in Galilee of old, let him write personally to me for information on
any point that I can make its message clearer.
If this chapter should be read by any of my loyal helpers who fail to
find in it a _personal_ recognition of the debt we owe them, they must
realize that these friends who are mentioned specifically are meant also
as vicarious symbols, to stand for all those who have enabled me to
carry each successive year what we hope is a fuller message of love to
the people of the North. No one can have a keener realization than I,
that, whereas the credit has come to me, but for my splendid colleagues
and helpers on the Coast and off it, our work would have died of
inanition years ago.
CHAPTER XXVIII
SALAAM
IT is not unnatural to expect anyone approaching a summit to see farther
over the horizon. As the end draws near, it is easier, also, to speak
freely; while the truth told by grey hairs does not hurt nearly so much
and the motives for speaking at all are not wrongly construed.
The word 'religion,' before Christ's day, meant collecting, or binding
together. Even then it was used loosely about men's relations to the
gods. After Christ's time it began definitely to connote the relation of
man with God. So, as I analyse it to-day, a man's religion means the way
in which he is related or tied to God. Moreover, looking back from my
hill-top, I see more clearly that the value of a man's religion must be
measured by what it has enabled him to do.
At one time, many friends told me to be sure and read Harold Begbie's
_Broken Earthenware_, and later Hugh Redwood's _God in the Slums_. Both
of these I did read with pleasure and profit. All the same, the chief
reaction in my mind was that regularly through the years I had seen
exactly the same results of religion in experience; and I wondered
whether the great interest in those books was a confession that such
results were rare and unexpected. Are most of us so-called religious
people really 'religious'—men bound to God—in any practical way?
Does this relationship, which has so marvellous a presumption as 'bound
to God,' really mean the making of new men out of old ones? If so, it
surely must not be necessary to go to books to find out about it. That
kind of religion would be of such untold value to the individual, the
home, the state, the world, that you would not be able to prevent every
sane normal human being from wanting it and working to obtain it. If it
does not make new men out of old, by all means scrap-heap it, and let us
find something that does.
[Illustration: PLAYTIME IN THE NORTH]
When the Kickapoo Indians came to our town with a band on the roof of
their large wagon, a crowd at once gathered around them. Soon
individuals, like ourselves, except that they had swallowed Kickapoo
pills or rubbed in Kickapoo oil, began to come out of the wagon, to
throw away their crutches, and to walk off home, waving us good-bye.
Nearly every man in town who was lame went and paid quite a lot to give
that organization a 'try-out,' at any rate. Later on, many had to buy
new crutches, but they had tried out the system.
The shelves full of patent remedies that an unfortunate druggist has to
carry in stock in these days testify to the fact that men will always be
interested in anything that they believe 'does things.'
Why is it that the very term 'religious life' has come to voice the
popular idea that religion is altogether divorced from ordinary life?
That conception is the exact opposite of Christ's teaching. The
all-too-general idea is that religion has something to do with dying and
the next world, but little bearing on business or pleasure in this. If
religion is primarily a personal insurance ticket, which, by the way,
does not even provide for those whom a man leaves behind, one would not
expect much real interest in it, especially on the part of youth.
It has been my experience to be lost in a Canadian forest in stormy
weather when I could not see any heavenly bodies to guide me. I have
been adrift in an open motor boat on the ocean when I had carelessly
left my compass at home. Thick fog came on and a field of heavy floe ice
drove around my boat. I dared not move in any direction, for I might be
going farther from safety. It was hours before I caught sight of the sun
and so got the direction to steer. I have driven, in the dark of night,
on to the rocky cliffs near Cape Bauld, which stick out into the
Atlantic Ocean at the extreme northern end of Newfoundland, where the
waters of the Gulf, meeting the polar current, made a most uncomfortable
seaway for the broken-down motor boat I was in. A passing schooner
failed to see us and left us behind. At the last minute, a young
Canadian volunteer in my boat made the engine go and gave us the power
without which we were lost.
I do not admit that I am an unusual fool or weakling, but my diary
records are full of such physical experiences, which, even as I write,
overwhelm me with proof of my own dependency through life on power and
guidance outside myself in mere material matters. In a north-east gale
on North Labrador I had once decided to run for a harbour called
Boulter's Rock. The fog which had fallen since I left the last port had
shut it entirely from sight, but the rising sea and approaching night,
in that section of Coast with no lighthouse, many rocks, and none too
reliable a chart, made it our best chance. We had picked up a rock which
I knew and were heading for the narrow entrance when I thought I
perceived the seas breaking heavily clean across the harbour mouth. What
to do to save the ship I did not know, when an old Newfoundland
fisherman who was on the bridge with me said, 'There's an entrance not
much wider than the ship under your lee. It's perfectly safe if you
strike it. But you'll have to put your helm hard up instantly.' 'You
take the wheel,' I said. It seemed a big venture. But he did it. I could
not have saved the ship alone.
Let me give one more instance. In my little steamer I had picked up a
sinking Banking schooner with twenty-three men aboard, somebodies'
husbands and sons. They were pumping seven thousand strokes an hour day
and night, just to keep the hull afloat. Heavy seas made it very
dangerous to try to ride out the night where we were. Outside us were
reefs we could not see, so that we dared not stand out from the land to
get sea-room, nor could we tow her in to the land, which was totally
invisible, for with that big vessel in tow we should not be able to turn
quickly enough when the cliffs were close enough for us to see them.
I ordered out a boat from each ship in the fog to try to find where we
were. An hour went by. The darkness was increasing. The seas grew
heavier. We became very anxious for our boats, which had disappeared
instantly into the fog. There is a groove worn right into the rim of the
deck-house roof by the wire which pulls our foghorn open, as a result of
ceaseless blowing for those boats. At last we heard voices, and almost
alongside, on the crest of a big roller, loomed up the dory with her
four men in shiny oilskins rowing in perfect time, as if they were on
the Thames in a racing shell. They had found an island they knew, and
their cheery voices brought just what religion does when it binds man to
God—guidance, power, and joy. An hour later we lay at anchor under the
shadow of a whaling station.
The tough old shell-back skipper of the Banker came aboard. 'Did you
know where you were going all that time?' he asked. 'Hadn't the faintest
notion. Only trying to keep her offshore.' 'I'll say you're some
navigator,' he rejoined. 'You wouldn't if you knew,' had to be my reply.
Analogy is no argument, but this is true of things unseen. To say that
this is what religion has meant to me may seem a negation of that very
humility which is the primary essential of religion. We all lose sight
of the guide and show the white feather sometimes; but what I want to
insist is, that, just because we all require guidance and strength, we
all need to be bound to God.
A great many of my friends have told me that emotionalism biases
judgment. They regard any such experience as that which the Bible calls
'conversion' as unworthy of a man of science. That has not seemed to me
altogether fair. For the only one of the Apostles who experienced
anything of the kind, so far as we know, was the most highly educated
and most scientific of them all. To me it means as brave a voluntary act
as a man is capable of. David speaks of men being converted. So do the
great old Prophets like Isaiah. So does Christ Himself. But they never
prescribed any particular process necessary for that step which binds
men to God. For in this, too, one man's meat is another's poison. That
is part of the price and of the glory of our individuality.
Of one thing I am convinced. Religion is the reverse of any one,
cubby-holed experience. If I am not religious in the way I eat and
drink, and in the way I deal with my wife, or my crew, or my students,
or my customers, as the case may be, the fact that I accept all the
theology ever taught does not make me so. About religious life divorced
from common sense, I believe, as Betsey Prig did about Mrs. 'Arris,
'There ain't no sich person.' How each individual keeps touch with God,
I consider it impertinent on the part of any other individual to
criticize. Only Christ, so far, has proved the right to say, 'Follow
Me.'
I have known people who would have been saved a lot of trouble if they
had had a sense of humour. A man like Will Rogers has a real value in
life. He is helping the man who reads the papers to cultivate that
saving sense. Many men to-day are honestly worried because everybody
does not agree with them. Men are learning very slowly that you cannot
force even your wife to agree with you. In time, even the infallible
will see the humour of being concerned about another man's relationship
to God because he does not agree with all their opinions, or has not
'had to go through' the same experiences to secure that companionship of
the invisible Friend and Guide which all men need. Some of us have to
join a Rotary Club or a modern Civic Club to learn how to make any
friends. As I am one of them, Rotarians will understand that I am
casting no reflection on compulsory lunches. There is a story of an
elderly bank president who joined that organization. One old member put
his hand on the banker's shoulder when, somewhat shyly, he entered the
room for his first lunch, and said, 'So glad to see you, Ted.' Ted! He
had not been called 'Ted' for forty years:—and a tear rolled down the
cheek of that soft-hearted old hard-shell.' No doubt the very story
shocks some people who read this. To them, the foundations of society
would be threatened by such habits. I am inclined myself to agree that
they might be, and also that possibly we might benefit by the process.
Though I am a perfectly orthodox practitioner, I have known osteopaths
and bone-setters help to make new men out of old, sometimes. No
consulting surgeon claims to know it all. Healers of the body know that
they are not infallible, whatever others claim to be. As I analyse
experience, I would say that humility is one of the most attractive, and
therefore most powerful, assets in making new men out of old ones.
Obviously it is an absolute essential of being bound to God.
In 1887, when first as a youngster from hospital I went to the North Sea
for a cruise among the deep-sea fishermen, I knew that they were far
finer sailors than I, far older and tougher and more experienced. On the
wheel of the ship was engraved, 'Follow Me.' That was a real challenge,
and I have never since heard any other as striking. It went on, 'and I
will make you fishers of men.' I knew then perfectly well that that was
my only chance anyhow; I know now that no man can deny the truth of it.
One brass wheel at least with that inscription on it lies at the bottom
of the Atlantic to-day, preaching to the fishes, like Saint Francis.
A few years later, when I was fitting out a ketch in Yarmouth, England,
to sail around South Ireland and Greenland, to see if I could be of any
service to the fishermen of the polar waters, I realized the conceit of
a little general practitioner of medicine, and wondered what I should
do. The best authority on such a subject that I knew was my mother. From
the hill-top of her life, bound to God if ever a human being was, my
mother wrote to me. 'Read Psalm one hundred and forty-three, verse ten,
in the Prayer Book version.' I can still remember hurrying off to look
up what David had to say about it. It read, 'Teach me to do to-day the
thing that pleases Thee.' That was all there was to it, but I knew that
a man had to be bound to God to do that.
Let me say that, in proportion as that is done, there are no divorces.
We in Labrador have to come to the great centres of civilization to
learn most things, but we can give civilization that, and they can try
it out safely. Divorces are not a necessary corollary of modern life. It
is also a certain cure for graft in Governments. That is worth thinking
over. As for war—England gave a knighthood to the first man who wrote a
book to show that very thing. We know absolutely now that war hurts
every participant alike. Yet we still try to cure these evils by the
ways which have always failed.
I once asked two of the best-known surgeons in the world what was the
secret that brought hundreds of doctors from all over the earth, when
they were themselves in need of help, to a village in a 'woolly western'
State to get it. One reason was my friends' plain common sense. They
went everywhere, studying what methods really made new men, and when
they found anything that seemed helpful they tried it out, and if it
worked better for the patient than their own old ones they threw the old
methods out of the window. What a lot of time would be saved, now wasted
in criticizing and arguing about methods, what strength and money would
be released for better work, instead of being dissipated in bolstering
up outworn 'religious' institutions and superstitions, if that plan were
followed. There is nothing new about this. There is no new way to judge
the value of 'religion' any more than if it were the value of surgery or
navigation. The only gauge is what it does. There is only one
description of the Day of Judgment in the Bible, and Christ Himself drew
the picture. Everyone was judged by his record.
A friend, while earning his living in Pittsburgh, opened a room in a
factory district for services on Sundays. A crowd of operatives smashed
the windows and wrecked the place. The police arrested some rioters,
but, of course, my friend would not prosecute. Instead, he asked them
why they did it.
'We aren't going to have you dead-beat a living out of the superstitions
of our women and children.'
'But I don't get one cent for it. I merely thought it would be of help
to you. If you don't need it, let's close it by all means. You do need
education, however, and I'll hold a night school instead, if you like.'
Twenty-two men turned up the next night. Does it surprise anyone to
learn that a little later twenty-two men were coming together on Sundays
to ask God's help in their difficulties? The value and power of this
venture with God is measured absolutely by how closely we tie up with
Him. The testimony of their bitterest enemies to such men as ignorant
John and fallible Peter was that 'they had turned the world upside
down.' They put in everything they had _usque ad mortem_.
From the hill I can look back on absolute proofs of this theorem, babes
and sucklings though we may be. I would add that those who have 'passed
on' have only begun their influence. Carpenters and fishermen, like
kings and presidents, human beings from every rank of life, still live.
I do not call King David dead, or President Lincoln. I know that
Livingstone and Gordon and Kingsley and my mother influence me now; and
more than one 'highbrow' has told me that he got more help from an hour
in a fisherman's cottage with one of those apostles of to-day, in duffel
trousers and skin boots, than in many a big cathedral.
There is a tiny cottage at Fox Harbour in Labrador, built of logs and
rough-hewn lumber. The owner could not read or write, nor did he ever
have a bank account. But he was brave and honest, and he has helped to
turn more than one old man into a new one. We called him 'Uncle George.'
I have told his story. He still lives to us who knew him. I never go by
that harbour but I thank God for 'Uncle George,' who was 'bound to God.'
It is only what we put into life, or entrust to God, that He keeps for
us. That is the true measure of real religion—namely, that part of life
which we willingly bind to God. My failures have not been due to
intellectual difficulties, but just plain unreadiness to pay the cost of
following—and I believe the same is true of other men.
In Labrador we ought, in our isolation, to be able to trace causes of
and reasons for events easily. Personally, however, I have long since
ceased to deny things just because I could not explain them. Most 'whys'
are hard to answer, anyhow, and the very first is, 'Why are we put on
earth?' Is life a senseless tragedy? I know only one answer that
satisfies. 'Yes. It is a senseless, cruel tragedy to a sentient,
conscious mind if there is nothing in man's being "bound to God."' But
if he is, the 'why' is obvious and absolutely intelligible. It is that
we are needed to make the world better. God cannot do it without us. We
are not robots in an aimless drama. We are pawns on a board, but we can
co-operate with the master mind of the Player, can ourselves help Him to
win out. Nay, more. We are knights on a field of honour. The King
Himself cannot win His battle without us, He having entrusted us with
the task, ensuring victory if we 'are bound to Him.' I see no shame in
admitting that this is a venture of just plain faith. So did the writers
of the Bible, and so did Christ Himself. Do not forget that everything
in life must always be a venture of faith, from eating breakfast to
going to bed at night. It would be silly to sit up all night because you
cannot be _sure_ of waking.
From the hill-top of life I am trying to say that faith, 'reason grown
courageous' as someone has called it, has become assurance, not because
the fight is easy and we are never worsted, but because it has made life
infinitely worth while, so that I want all I can get of it, every hour
here, and all I can get hereafter, on the same terms. Oddly enough, this
is the best proof to my mind that continuing life will be given me. None
of our intuitive, reasonable longings go unsatisfied.
When the statement was made that faith could remove mountains, it seemed
unreasonable to those who did not believe it, and had no experience of
it; but now we can see through mountains, and talk through mountains;
and the 'invincible' strongholds of unfaith—the nature of matter
itself, the validity of the Newtonian teachings, even whether the
mountains exist or do not—are acknowledged to be matters of faith,
after all.
Many times on a Sunday morning I have looked over the congregation in
church and wondered why they spent time and money on religion. Last
Sunday, passing through a hamlet at the hour of service, we stopped to
join. This is a habit which we both formed in childhood, thank God and
our parents. This morning there were twenty persons between us and the
clergyman, and eighteen of those twenty were women. It was a fine
morning, and we had noticed that the golf links were crowded with men as
we passed. That is not an uncommon experience. I love to remember that
Charles Kingsley was a kinsman, if only for the common-sense apologies
which he made for rest of body and mind on Sunday which might have to
take the form of golf—only it was cricket with him on the Sands of
Dee—even if it kept people from coming to his church. I fell to
wondering why those eighteen were all women. Were the men on the golf
links wise and the women in church foolish? If so, why do we not close
up these sources of expense in these times of stringency? Would not the
country be better without them? My profession has led me to know a good
many mothers, and there is a deeper truth in _What Every Woman Knows_
than perhaps even Sir James Barrie thought of when he wrote that clever
and wise play.
Russia has adopted the alternative. She has thrown out and destroyed the
churches. Our forefathers may have been conventional, relics of a
'stuffy' Victorian era. Someone said to Sandy, 'We feed oats to cattle.
It is only in Scotland that you feed them to men any longer.' Sandy
looked the stranger well up and down, drew himself up to his six feet
two inches, and replied, 'Aye, mon, but look at the men!'
Have we any need to be ashamed of those who made us and our country?
Good things in this world all seem to need organization, from a football
match to an oil company, if the human element in them is to be
efficient. Organized methods for helping us to love our neighbour are
all human and fallible, but on that account they surely need our help
rather than our criticism.
From a Labrador viewpoint, the women are altogether right. Judging from
international efforts to improve conditions for the downtrodden, and so
getting better co-operation between men, one finds that such
organizations as the Red Cross, needlework guilds, or any societies for
making new conditions and new men through love, owe more to churches and
to women than do any other agencies. It would be ungrateful in the
extreme on my part were I not to bear testimony to them from this last
lap. When Mammie took in the missionary box to her master at the dinner
table, he put in fifty cents. She expected more and showed it. She had
given many times as much herself. 'I don't like your way of organizing,
Mammie. I like to give freely just what I have to God.' Next day at
dinner there was one cold potato, a few bones and remnants. When asked
for an explanation, Mammie said, 'I knows, Massa, you don't like
organizing, so I jes' done give you what I had, freely.'
I cannot hope to repay the debts which I owe to men either, but my
considered opinion goes all with the women in their vision of values and
their selfless sacrifices in life. Even a presumably increasingly
intelligent electorate seems to be more and more of that persuasion.
'But what about sectarian churches?' I am often asked. Are they not only
another testimony to our glorious individuality? Harvard does not
necessarily hate Yale, or Oxford Cambridge, because they think they have
some superiority over them, and occasionally try to show them so.
Physical rivalry is a healthy stimulus to physical prowess. It is
practically essential. When first we started football in Labrador, our
'unco guid' folk would not play a match without a previous agreement
that neither side should win. That would be leading men into temptation.
I have umpired in the early days, and have had, after allowing a goal,
to wait until the other side solemnly walked down the field and kicked
one to even up. From the first Sunday School which I ever entered I was
dismissed for teaching my class temperance and respect with
boxing-gloves, which is the way, I think, that God teaches most of us.
Every Christian, to my mind, need not be a sport, but he must be a good
sportsman. That is an essential of any man 'bound to God.' To carry our
analogy over, perhaps friendly spiritual rivalry is a stimulus to
spiritual progress.
What of the future? Periods of prosperity and depression seem inherent
in all human affairs. We are studying now the cyclic increase and
diminution in fur-bearing animals. That, at least, cannot be an appanage
of original sin. No Christian can be a pessimist. He knows better. God
is not only on His throne, but on His earth, deeper and more
ineradicably in the hearts of youth than ever I could believe, without
experience had assured me of it. No man can be a Christian and regard
his Master as a failure.
The future lies in the lap of the youth of to-day. What of them? Here
again experience convinces me that never in the world's history has
youth been so chivalrous as it is to-day, so imbued, not necessarily
with a sense of 'my duty to my neighbour,' but with a real desire to
help every 'neighbour' in trouble. Youth must be youth, and youth has
always to learn that it does not know, and cannot grasp reality except
by experience. Why worry overmuch if to-day they express their attitude
to God or their 'neighbours' by preferring to cross the dangerous road
in order to pay for the pleasure of putting a stranger in their car
while they walk, or to pay the bill for a down-and-out brother to eat,
rather than hurrying with priest or parson to a church service at the
capital? They need not be wrong because they do not see exactly eye to
eye with us. Who would imagine, unless faith helped them to do so, that
the result of asking men and women to give up holidays in Europe or in
Florida, and to come and pay all their own expenses, even if they could
afford it, for the pleasure of, say, digging a water-supply on the
Labrador, would ever result in having to keep a special office to weed
out the numbers needed and fend off more coming than, with all our
widespread activities, even we can take care of? This sounds immodest,
but it is true, and expresses the spirit of Christ in the youth of
to-day better than any other way I know.
As to death—well, I keep that question in the same category, as the
result of life's experience, as 'religious life' and 'Mrs. 'Arris.'
Maeterlinck was a layman and a man of learning, and I see by his _Blue
Bird_, that he is like-minded. The truth is, there are so many things to
be done that I have not had much time to think about death, and
personally yet had no experience of it. Yes, I am a surgeon; and I have
seen patients paralysed up to their necks, with their hearts still
beating, and their lungs kept going by the long nerve wire which runs
direct down to those bits of machinery from the brain. These people
always told me they were the same personality. Why they should cease to
be a person at all because I nick through one more nerve thread, little
thicker than a piece of cotton, I cannot say. Anyhow, until that last
nick takes place, a magistrate will accept on oath that the person is
exactly the same, though he may be 'dead' below the cervical vertebrae,
which means his neck. Everyone knows that the brain is not ourselves. It
is mine exactly as is my jack-knife or my boot. _I_ make one side of my
brain learn French. A doctor can destroy the few cells which I have
educated, and I know no French. But I can go to work and educate the
cells on the other side and learn French again. Everybody can know that
no part of my body is 'I,' only that it and its wires and cells relate
me to this material world. I have seen the accident called death of the
body more than once, but I never saw any reason to believe in the death
of personality. Every possible evidence of personal life after death
that can come to human beings, I should say comes through other channels
than the five senses that I am conscious of.
I once met Houdini, and watched him do amazing things, but I never knew
how he did them, much as I wanted to. God help us not to neglect to use
a thing—like faith—because we do not know why or how it works. It
would be a criminal offence in a doctor not to use X-rays even if he
does not know how barium chloride makes Gamma rays, or X-rays, visible.
People will laugh at me when I say that I have always had great joy in
seeing what the Bible has to say on any practical point. But I never
knew any big life problem yet about which it did not say a wiser thing
than any of the other sources available to me. Nearing the top of the
hill, I have been forced to go more slowly, and shall have time, or
ought to have if I do as my good advisers warn me, to devote to the
problems of 'whys' and 'hows.'
To love one's neighbour as one's self is not a mere pious sentiment. It
is every whit as much a law of life as fresh air is to the body. To live
to one's self only is never to live at all. All the world acclaims the
men who gave their lives for their country. Christ's men went farther.
They were internationally minded. The world cannot finally be God's
Kingdom until everyone is: and that end must be won through those
individuals who are 'bound to God' and love all their brothers. Old
Nehemiah was far too busy to be wasting time talking on the Plain of
Ono. He had the wall of God's city to build, which would not be built
unless he did it. Lots of us who go to church are not doing very much to
suggest that we worry greatly whether the walls of Christ's Kingdom are
strengthened; and yet there is every whit as much a piece of that wall
to be built by you and by me to-day as there was by that splendid old
Nehemiah in his day. When there are enough bits left unbuilt, enough
gaps left in the line, the nation without the protection of that wall is
carried into captivity as surely as was Israel, called God's people, and
for exactly the same reason, unwillingness to be 'bound to God.' Herein
lies the whole meaning of personality and of human life, 'It will not be
built if I do not build it.'
It is absurd to philosophize further. Some people worry about my
intellectual grasp of truth. We must know that our opinions are not a
matter of very great moment even to our next-door neighbour, except in
so far as what they lead us to do. I see no reason whatever to suppose
that the Creator lays great stress on them either. Experience answers
our problems—experience of faith, and common sense. For faith and
common sense together make reasonable service, that service which ends
by giving us the light of life, but which does not begin that way. This
'reasonable service' is what Saint Paul told us God asks for, and he
wrote it as a considered judgment from his life experience, when he was
'nearing the summit' and looking to go to Rome to lay down his life. As
a surgeon I have learned long ago that I must not wait to understand how
many things work before I use them to save life. And so I am content to
leave the comprehension of many problems until I have passed over the
bar, knowing that it is to God alone that we all stand, whether it is
here or beyond the horizon called death.
INDEX
Abraham, his tribulations in baptism as a convert, 35
Achilles, comes to mind in visit to Athens, 229
Adlavik Islands, 261
Admiralty, promises help of steamer for surveying when available, 241;
fits out 1600-ton steamer, 243
Aerial service in Labrador of great value, 243
Agag, a simile, 145
Agricultural Department of Canada makes grant for purchase of reindeer
herd, 188
Agriculture, no longer unsuccessful in Labrador, 265, 266
Ahknaton, King, 296
_Albert_, ship, prepared for service among fishermen of north-west
Atlantic, 71;
Dr. Elliot Curwen takes charge, 79;
awaits new steamer, 104; 118-19
Albert Medal for a heroic fisherman, 332
Alexander the Great, 296
Alexandra, Queen, visits 'the Elephant Man,' 57;
patronizes Labrador products at Wembley Imperial Exhibition, 291
Alexandria, Egypt, 294, 296
Algonquin Indians, 87
_Alice in Wonderland_, 34
Allardyce, Lady, reviews Girl Guides, 315
Allardyce, Sir William, opened St. Anthony Hospital as representative of
the King, 312
American College of Surgeons, invited to send committee to inspect
Labrador hospitals, 274;
confers fellowship on Sir Wilfred, 311;
gives A1 rating to St. Anthony Hospital, 312
Amherst College, 325
Amulets as cures, 90
Anchor Point, 237
Andover, Mass., 152
Andrews, Dr. Joseph, restores partial sight to blind twins, 154;
his annual visits to St. Anthony, 217;
now at rest near his California home, 330
Angell, Norman, his knighthood, 142, 306
Animal genetics, a new science, 150, 188
Animal Rescue League of Boston, 215;
builds model kennel in Labrador, 259
Anticosti Island, receives remnant of Mission's reindeer herd, 195
Apprentices in the fishing fleets, and their abuse, 64, 65
Arabian Desert, 297
Architects' Institute, 156, 335
Arctic Circle, 88
Arles, France, 28
Arnold, Thomas, of Rugby, 10
Aran Islands, 67
Assuan, Egypt, 296
Athens, Greece, 229, 230
_Aurora_, first vessel off to the sealing grounds, 111
Avignon, 29
Baal in Scripture lessons, 11
Babylon, ruins of, 299
Badger, Dr. Theodore L., President of Grenfell Alumni Association, 333
Baghdad, 299
Baier, Miss Frances, helps raise chief St. Anthony school to high
educationalstandard, 329
Baine, Johnstone and Co., donate building for hospital, 79;
their storehouse destroyed by fire, 253
Baksheesh, national anthem in the Land of the Pharaohs, and in Palestine,
294, 298
Baldwin, Hanson, on the water-supply job at Cartwright, 334
Bandmaster, in resplendent uniform, mistaken for Duke of Connaught on
visit to Labrador, 232
Bangor, 42
Bank of Montreal, 103
Banks, fishing grounds, 73
Barratry, plot for insurance nipped, 132;
its sequel a year later, 133-4
Barrie, Sir James, 317, 344
Bartlett, 'Capt. Bob,' of North Pole fame, mentioned, 84
Bartlett, Capt. Will, sells silver fox skin for Sir Wilfred, 84
Barton, Clara, 256
Basrah, 300
Bateman, Miss, helps raise chief St.
Anthony school to high educational standard, 329
Batteau, new dispensary and service rooms established, 255, 276, 277
Battle Harbour, 78, 88, 104;
hospital supplies a glass eye, 107, 108, 109, 121;
co-operative store established, 140;
hospital establishes 'Corner Cot' for Eskimo boy Pomuik, 152;
dire need of a lighthouse, and how one was established, 177-8, 179;
village destroyed by fire, 253, 254;
hospital deserves recognition, 274, 276;
first hospital burns, 277, 282
_Baucis_, wrecked on the Coast with a cargo of whole wheat, 170
Bavaria, its use of peat, 267
Bay of Islands, 155
_Bay Rupert_, new ship, wrecked, 171;
much treasure salved from her before she disappears, 172-6
'Beast,' the, designation earned by Sir Wilfred's belligerency as a
schoolboy, 13
Beehive Monastery, 68
Bees, fail through lack of understanding, 269
Beeton, Sir Mayson, curious about 'the girl in black,' 207
Begbie, Harold, his _Broken Earthenware_, 336
Bellevue Hospital, N.Y., 219
Bell Mullet, market-town in Ireland, 69
_Beothic_, steamer, rescues men from the ice, 332
Berea College, Ky., 213;
confers degree on Sir Wilfred, 308-9
_Berengaria_, compared with _Strathcona II_, 227
Berlin, by radio, 237
Besant, Mrs. Annie, 55
Bethesda, 43
Bethnal Green, 31, 55
Betsey Prig, 339
'Big Ben,' in Westminster, heard by radio in Labrador, 237
Billingsgate Market, 30
Birdseye, Clarence, biologist in charge of fur-farm, discovers secret of
preserving food indefinitely, by instant freezing, 250-51
Biscoe, Rev. Tyndal, his book, _Forty Years Upstream_, 303
_B. J. One_, a play, its gospel, 142
Blackburn, Mr. and Mrs., missed at St. Anthony, 330-31
Blanc Sablon, beginning of Canadian Labrador, 87, 170
Blandford, Capt. Samuel, of the sealing fleet, 110
Blizzard, hits fishing craft, its effect, 3
_Blue Bird_, by Maurice Maeterlinck, 346
Board of Trade and the fishing fleets, 63, 78
Bob Sawyer, as a type, 30
Bolshevism, 272
Bombastes Furioso, as a futility, 142;
admits disarmament a rational measure, 234
Bonne Bay, 333
Boot-leggers, 223
Boots, their method of making by Eskimo women, 126
Borden, Sir Robert, 310
Borkum, 63
Boston, extends recognition to Sir Wilfred, 310
Bots-fly, enemy of caribou, 186
Boulter's Rock, 260, 278, 338
Boundaries of Labrador, finally settled in 1927, 240
Bowdoin College, makes Sir Wilfred an honorary _alumnus_, 309
Bowring, Messrs., and their ships, 93
Boxing, a safety-valve to settle differences, 15
Bradlaugh, Charles, 55
Bragg, Gen. Braxton, 209
Brazilian Government, sued for loss of steamer _George B. Cluett_, but has
failed thus far to pay judgment rendered against her, 225
Brede Bugt, in Iceland, 117
Brick Church, N.Y., 325
'Bricks,' of concrete, collected for Children's Home at Cartwright, 156
Brindisi, household word in English homes, 229
British Broadcasting Corporation, 142
_British Medical Journal_, 47
_Broken Earthenware_, by Harold Begbie, 336
Bryn Mawr University, 206, 208, 215
Buckingham Palace, connected with St. John's, NF., for laying corner-stone
of Seamen's Institute by King George V, 224, 251
Bullet in soldier's pocket, after going through his hand, 232-3;
another through a Prayer Book, stopped by second copy, 233
Byrd, Admiral Richard E., used 'Grenfell Cloth' at South Pole, 126, 287;
South Pole Expedition had three Labrador 'wops,' 328
Byrd South Pole Expedition, 287, 328
Cabot, John, and the _Matthew_, 72, 74, 75
Caesar, Julius, 296
Calendars, bring profits to the Mission, 213
Cambridge University, 54
Canada Bay, as a site for a sawmill, 144;
survey poorly done and source of untold trouble, 144
Canadian Pacific R.R., 103
Canterbury Pilgrims, their modern prototypes, 324
Cape Bauld, 88, 337
Cape Chidley, 88, 98, 105, 129, 155, 181, 259, 333
Cape Farewell, 75
Cape Harrigan, 171
Cape Mugford, 181
Cape Race, as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, 169
Cape St. John, 75, 290
Capone, Al, a simile, 184
Caribou, readily domesticated, their shooting forbidden, 185, 186
Carlson, Miss, 329
Carnarvon, 41
Carnegie, Andrew, his libraries and their emphasis, 164
Carpenter comes from Kentucky to teach making of looms, 323
Carpenter, Rev. C. C., interested in the Eskimos, 151, 152
Cartwright, school, 162;
new water and power supply, 249;
fur-farm established by John Hays Hammond, 250;
coming capital of Labrador, 254, 270, 276;
parsonage burned, 277;
construction of water-supply, 324-5, 334
Catalina, headquarters of Fishermen's Union, 257
Catholics, share mixed religions and variety of creeds in skin-grafting
and a contributed wooden leg, 128
Cavendish, a rule of conduct, 8
Chaliapin, Fedor, helps Labrador cause, 256
Charms, against disease, 41
Chart of Labrador lacking, but survey is made by Sir William MacGregor,
and results accepted by Royal Geographical Society, 180-82;
new survey made from the air by Alexander Forbes, 241-3
Chateau, _see_ Henley
Cheops, 295
Chester, 29;
Race-course, 79
Cheston, Miss Charlotte, gives service in Industrial Department, 330
Chicago, 206, 209, 211, 237, 247
Chicago Grenfell Association, 329
Child Welfare Department comes into being, 212;
work started, 270
Children of Sir Wilfred and Lady Grenfell, 211-12
Children's Home in Newfoundland, 155
Chosen People, 11
Christ, when He showed His manhood, 56;
put to death as a pacifist, 234;
Tomb a shocking fraud, 298-9;
His belief in conversion, 339;
He drew the picture of the Day of Judgment, 342;
His men were internationally minded, 347-8
Christian Evidence Society, 55
Christian Socialism, 55
Christmas card, King George's, a source of publicity and profit to the
Mission, 213-14
Church of England school, 159
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, 298
Civic Club, 340
Civil War, 281, 327
Clark, Sir Andrew, 45-6
Cleopatra and Caesarian, pictured, 296
Cleveland, Miss Catherine, in the Industrial Department, 329
Clifton, school, 11
Clifton Downs, 27
Clothing for Arctic wear, 126
Clothing problem, and the new store, 256-7
Clovelly, clock from its village church to be set in tower in Labrador as
memorial to John Mason Little, 248
Cluett, George B., of Troy, builds three-masted schooner for the Mission,
with double-edged Biblical inscription, 224-225;
schooner lost, his family replaces it with new one, her first voyage
from T Wharf in Boston, 226
C. M., a Brahmin from India, 57
Cocktail and a string of pearls, 223
College of Physicians, 58
Colour prejudice, 300-1
Columbia University, 219
Concerts heard by radio in Labrador, 237
Conche, snowdrift causes death by smothering, 145;
nurse stationed there, 276;
she takes five and a half days to carry patient to St. Anthony Hospital
on sledge drawn by men volunteers, flies back in twenty minutes, 326
_Congregationalist, The_, its 'Corner' children become guardians of the
Eskimo boy Pomuik, 152
Congregationalist Library, in Boston, 205
Conjeeveram, 302
Connaught, Duke of, Governor-General of Canada, pays long-promised visit
to Labrador, 231-2
Convent of the Sisters of Zion, 299
Cook, Capt. James, his charts of Labrador Coast, 241
Cook, Dr., dogs he brought destroyed, 269
Co-operative stores, 135;
success at Red Bay, 137-8;
attacked as 'menace to honest trade,' but vindicated by enquiry
commission, 140-41;
debts incurred through bad management, 143;
prejudice against them by Government, 191, 224
'Copper store,' native corruption of co-operative store, 139
Coptic Convent of St. Simon, 297
Corner-stone of Seamen's Institute in St. John's laid by King George V by
cable from Buckingham Palace, 224
Coronation of King George V, precedes laying of corner-stone of Seamen's
Institute in St. John's by the King, 224
Corporation of the City of Boston, extends recognition to Sir Wilfred, 310
_Cradle of the Deep, The_, Sir Frederick Treves's book, 118
Crèmaillière, NF., 188
Cricket in mid-Atlantic, 78
Criswell, Miss, 329
Crookhaven, 72
Cunard Co., its courtesy to Sir Wilfred's mother on the _Mauretania_, 205
Curley, James, Mayor of Boston, presents loving-cup to Sir Wilfred and
Lady Grenfell at lunch at City Hall, 226
Currie, Gen. Sir Arthur, on behalf of McGill University, confers
fellowship on Sir Wilfred, 310
Curtis, Dr. Charles, earns A1 rating for St. Anthony Hospital, 312;
marries Miss Harriot Houghteling, 328
Curwen, Dr. Elliot, takes charge of the ship _Albert_, 79
Cushman, Miss Eleanor, of New Bedford, secretary of Farmington School, is
'never never sick at sea,' dubbed 'the Sphinx,' 327
_Dahabeeyahs_ on the Nile, 295
Damascus, 299
Dampier, William, his raider compared to the _Strathcona_, 121
Dancing as a wedge of wickedness in the kindergarten, 160-61
Dante, 73
Darling, Prof. John May, granted leave from Edinburgh University to make
survey of Labrador, 150
D'Aubigny, Sir Philip, 298
David, King, and his joyful noise as a contribution to help, 256;
speaks of men being converted, 339, 341;
his influence still potent, 342
David and Goliath, vision of, 4
Davis Inlet, 97, 123
Day of Judgment, described in Bible, 341-2
'Deep,' the, 3
Delano, William Adams, plans concrete Children's Home in Cartwright, 156;
responsible for all architect work, 335
Delhi, 301;
Durbar, 2
Delmonico's, a simile, 130
Denderah, Egypt, 296
Dennis, the cook, 41
Dennison Cottage, erected as nursing station at Forteau, 282
Deptford, 30
Dick, the Eskimo, presents silver-fox skin to Sir Wilfred, its sale brings
family a winter's diet, 84
Dickens, Charles, 31
Discretionary Fund, its usefulness, and how it works, 260-63
Diseases due to poverty, 94, 283
Doane, Ernest, mail-man, only man who ever crossed Straits of Belle Isle
in winter, 236;
resigns after four crossings, 237
Doe, John, and Mrs. Doe, benefit from Discretionary Fund, 261-2
Dogger Bank, 62-3, 67
Dogs, in driving, their instinct in finding way over difficult terrain,
slight modification of wolf, 122-3;
as tractor animals, 183-4, 236;
ability to provide for themselves, their occasional reversion to the
'call of the wild,' 184-5;
as herders, 191;
adrift with Sir Wilfred on an ice-pan, 198-9;
three killed and skinned to save himself, 200;
tablet to their memory, 203;
fishermen too poor to treat them properly, 258;
Animal Rescue League builds model kennel, 259;
new kennels at St. Anthony, 268;
difficulties of cross-breeding for gentler animals, 269;
team presented by Henry Ford, 283;
Egypt a reminder of the pack, 294;
large ones favoured by Eskimos for motive power, 318
Dog-Team Tavern, near Burlington, Vt., run by volunteers, 214-15, 291
Domino Run, 74
Double Island Light, near Battle Harbour, first lighthouse on the Labrador
Coast, 178
Douglas, 40
Drake, Sir Francis, his ship compared to the _Strathcona_, 121
Drinking-saloons at Great Yarmouth, over a hundred closed, 119
Dry-dock, a necessity in the North, 238;
anonymous donor furnishes one at St. Anthony, it shows profit, 239
Dundonald, Earl, his _Speedy_ compared to the _Strathcona_, 121
Durand, Mrs. Charles, of Chicago, Lady Grenfell's sister, 210
Durbar of Delhi, 2
Dynllyn, 41
Ecce Homo Arch, 299
Education, neglected among children of Labrador, 159;
its relation to the service of the world, 162;
volunteers teachers of children, 164-5;
technical training the principal aim, 166;
proportion of students sent out who return for service, 166-7
Educational Fund comes into being, 212
Edward VII and his enquiry on Labrador police, 291
Edwards, black man from Antigua, as a lecturer for the Christian Evidence
Society, 55-7
Edwards, Jonathan, as he might consider certain 'preachers of the Gospel,'
215
Egypt, first objective of a world tour, 294
_Elbe_, steamship, lost with passengers, 64
'Elephant Man, the,' vaudeville performer under care at London Hospital,
57-8
Elisha, 298
Elizabethan English still current in Labrador, 90
Emily Beaver Chamberlain Hospital, at North-West River, destroyed by fire,
277
_Emma E. White_ and her cargo of lumber sold for debts incurred by St.
John's co-operative stores, 142-3
Emma Willard School of Troy, N.Y., provides expenses of Orphanage head,
327
Endowment Fund suggested and carried out successfully, 245-7
English Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, unable to carry on,
217
Ephesus, and the rostrum upon which St. Paul stood, 230
Episcopal Society for the Promotion of Christianity Among the Jews, 34-5
_Erling_, wrecked on the Coast, 171
Eskimos, life among the, 80-81;
truck system, 81-2;
original natives of Labrador, 87;
their numbers dwindling from disease, 88;
fishing their main industry, 89;
epidemics of influenza among them, 98;
burial custom, 99-100;
women's method of sewing skins, 126;
site selected for new station among those hitherto unreached, 129;
Encampment at Chicago World's Fair, 151;
Pomuik, an exhibit, dying among band in Labrador, 152;
Moravian Mission boarding-school at Makkovik, 163;
benefit from wreck of _Bay Rupert_, 172-3, 175;
prize reindeer skin for clothing, 187;
Hudson's Bay Co. finds remunerative work for them, 252;
classed as ferocious savages by Christian world, 259, 309;
favour large dogs for motive power, 318
Esna, Egypt, 296
Excursions to Labrador arranged for, 156
Farmington School, has secretary who is 'never sick at sea,' 327
Faroe group, 116
Fastnet Light, difficulty of getting in and out of, 68
Fear as a driving force, 234
Feb. 28 as a birthday, 1-2
Fenwick, Hurry, 47
Fergus, Dr. ('Fungi'), 18
Ferole, Labrador, 290
Festiniog, mining district, 3
Field, Dick, benefits from Discretionary Fund, 261
Fish, so plentiful, make soundings impossible, 249;
instantaneous freezing a new process for preserving food indefinitely,
250-51
Fisheries, their dangers, difficulties, and risks, 59 ff.;
the one asset of Iceland, 117;
changes since the War, 257
Fishermen's Union, 257
_Fleur-de-Lys_, racing yacht, given to the Mission by Dr. Louis Stimson,
333
Flowers Cove, and the trans-Atlantic liner's danger, 108-9;
co-operative store, 139;
undone by success, becomes private enterprise, 140;
village expands, 255, 269, 275
Forbes, Alexander, Professor of Physiology at Harvard, makes new survey of
Labrador, 241-3
Ford, George, factor of Hudson's Bay Co., 152
Ford, Mr. and Mrs. Henry, have farewell meal on new schooner _George B.
Cluett_, 226;
his contribution of a dog team, 283;
presents one of his cars to the Industrial Department, 290
Forteau Point, on the Coast, 170;
village flourishing, 255;
its hospital a success, 275;
Dennison Cottage erected as nursing station, 282
_Forty Years Upstream_, by Rev. Tyndale-Biscoe, 303
Fowler, Mrs. Anderson, and her doctor son give whole season of free
service to Labrador, 333
Fowler, Miss Emily, 333
Fox-farms in Labrador, 147-8, 251
Fox Harbour, 342
_Freethinker, The_, 55
French, Hollis, procures dry-dock through anonymous donor, 239
Frissell, Varick, takes moving pictures of wrecked _Bay Rupert_, 172;
lost in blowing-up of steamship _Viking_, 331
Furness-Withy Line, gives free passage to and fro to workers from England
on Labrador survey, 242
Furs, as wearing apparel, 125-6;
cheap in Labrador, 147;
fox-farms started at St. Anthony and elsewhere, 148, 149, 251
'Gabbatha,' the, 299
Gabriel, the Angel's name conferred on Eskimo boy Pomuik by Moravian
Brother, 152
Gadarene swine, a simile, 194
Games, deprivations and avoidances, 15, 16;
and toys lacking in child development on the Coast, 160
Gamma rays, criminal in a doctor to neglect their use, 347
Gandhi, Mahatma, 301-2, 309
Garden Clubs of America contribute greenhouses, 265
Gates, late for, its penalties, 16-17
Genetics of animals, a new science, 150, 188
Geographical Society, _see_ Royal Geographical Society
Geographical Society of New York, undertakes to prepare chart from survey
of Labrador, 242
George V, Christmas card a source of publicity and profit to the Mission,
213-14;
lays corner-stone of Seamen's Institute in St. John's by cable, 224
_George B. Cluett_, three-masted schooner presented to the Mission, with
double-edged Biblical inscription, 224-5;
vessel lost and replaced with new one by Cluett family, 225-6, 267
George's Cove, 255, 278
Gillespie, Prof. William, with students from Princeton, installs
foundations of Children's Home at Cartwright, 156;
shows how to get through blue clay and gravel, 334
'Girl in black, the,' a mystery for a time, 207, 208, 209, 211, 212;
fruits of her vision, 212-15
Girl Guides, reviewed by Lady Allardyce, 315
Gladstone, William E., 45
Glass eyes, a fortunate gift, 106
Goats for milk, a slogan that brings a gift of eight from Chicago, 270-71
_God in the Slums_, by Hugh Redwood, 336
Gods of Egypt, 296
Good Samaritan, 298
Goodale, Edward, with Byrd South Pole Expedition, driving dogs, 328
Gordon, Charles George ('Chinese'), still an influence, 342
Gordon School and Orphanage, at Muddy Bay, burned, 277
Gould, Albert, helps save wrecked _Pendragon_ by manning pumps all night,
180;
then mans surveying table half the next night, 181
Gound, Albert, becomes Chairman of New England Grenfell Association, 325
Governor of Newfoundland, in resolution, suggests invitation to come
again, 78
Governor and Company of Adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay, chartered
in 1669, 86
Grace Episcopal Church, Chicago, 211
Grand Banks fisheries, their hospital schooners, 119
Grand Falls of Labrador, 101;
for water-power, 240, 243, 309;
first moving pictures taken by Varick Frissell, 331
Gready Islands, Labrador, whaling station established, then abandoned, 253
Great Cop, quicksand, 4
Great War, 89;
begins, 194;
incidents of the battle-field, 232-4, 257, 279
Great Yarmouth, over a hundred drinking-saloons closed up, 119
Greeley, Dr. Hugh, of Wisconsin University, volunteers and helps start
hospital at Pilley's Island, 279
Greene, Ted, a volunteer from Amherst, on an island on North Newfoundland
coast, 325
Greenhouses, multiply with the success of agriculture in Labrador, 265,
266
Greenland glaciers among attractions of Labrador, 244
Greenwich, Conn., friends present a greenhouse to the Mission, 265
_Greetlands_, laden with cattle food, wrecked on the Coast, 170
_Grenfell_, name of first English vessel to sail to Newfoundland, 72
Grenfell, Algernon, brother of Sir Wilfred, and occasional companion, 7;
his published works, 7;
a planner of escapades, their results, 8-9, 11;
takes scholarship for Oxford, 11, 29;
his eminence as a cook, 39;
operated on by Sir Joseph Lister, 48;
repairs steam launch, 79
Grenfell, Algernon Sydney, father of Sir Wilfred, brilliant scholar and
Fellow of the Geographical Society, 7;
his joke upon a premature invitation to visit, 9;
getting rid of an undesirable caller, 10;
insists on special tutoring for Wilfred while recovering health in South
of France, 20;
accepts chaplaincy of London Hospital, 28;
his death, 35, 49
Grenfell, Cecil, brother of Sir Wilfred, too young for his companionship,
7
Grenfell, Mrs. Jane G., mother of Sir Wilfred, sails with her son for New
York, 205;
informed of his marriage
proposal, she sheds an unaccustomed tear, 208-9
Grenfell, Kinloch Pascoe, younger son of Sir Wilfred, 211
Grenfell, Lady, result of her educational work, 141;
has charge of Industrial Department, 165-6;
her management of Child Welfare Department and Educational Fund, 212,
232;
with the Endowment Fund solicitors, 246-7;
selling industrial products, 290, 291;
visit to Moscow and Leningrad, 300, 327, 333
Grenfell, Maurice, brother of Sir Wilfred, his death, 7
Grenfell, Pascoe, of the Bank of England, 104
Grenfell, Rosamond Loveday, daughter of Sir Wilfred, 212
Grenfell, Sir Wilfred Thomason, birth, and the compensations of its date,
1;
memories of boyhood, 2 ff.;
wins scholarship at Marlborough, 11;
the school, its environment, intimacies, customs, games, 12 ff.;
sent off to South of France for health—and enjoyment, 19;
boat that looked 'awfully like a coffin,' 22-3;
friendship for 'Mad G.,' 24-5;
pickled human brain decides future destiny and he takes up the
profession of medicine, 29;
his studies at London Hospital, 30-33;
evangelist Moody interests him, 33;
father's death, 35, 49;
experiences as Good Samaritan in the slums, 35-9;
holidays afloat, 39 ff.;
finishes second year at hospital and advances to 'walking the
hospitals,' 45;
memory of an amputation, 48;
experience with criminals, and knowledge of medical jurisprudence,
50-52, 54;
real value of money dawns on him, 55;
passes final examinations and becomes member of College of Physicians
and Royal College of Surgeons, 58;
a venture among the fishing fleets, 59 ff.;
Public School Camps interest him, 66;
entry and exit at Fastnet Light, 68;
goes in the _Albert_ to a new mission in the north-west Atlantic, 71;
St. John's aflame as party reaches city, 72-3;
opportunities for service many among the myriad islands, 75;
returns home and prepares for another visit, 78;
tour among the Eskimos, 80-81;
work primarily among the white fishermen, 89 ff.;
visits Canada to raise funds for hospital needs, 102;
a trip through the Dominion, 103-4;
Lord Strathcona presents steamer _Sir Donald_ to mission, 104;
first operation without anaesthetics, 108-9;
loss of the _Sir Donald_, 109;
goes out with the seal fishermen, 110;
a visit to Iceland, 116-17;
guest of Sir Frederick Treves on the Scilly Islands, gives a life-saving
exhibition, 117-18;
rated as purser on a copper-ore tanker, at 25 cents for the trip, 121;
wearing apparel in winter, 126;
adventures in sympathy, 127;
religious creeds mixed in skin-grafting and a wooden leg, and a run of
operations mingled, 128-129;
nips an attempt at scuttling for insurance, 131-2;
its sequel a year later, 132-4;
how they 'went dry' on the Labrador, 134;
serves as a magistrate, 135-6;
difficulties over co-operative stores, 137;
establishment at St. Anthony, 139;
co-operatives attacked as 'menace to honest trade,' but vindicated by
enquiry commission, 140-41;
assumes an indebtedness of $25,000 incurred by co-operative stores,
through mismanagement, and loses ship _Emma E. White_, 142-3;
begins the collection of children, takes two of them from Labrador to
England, 151;
collection grows, 153-4;
establishes Children's Homes in Newfoundland and Labrador, 155;
kindergarten a source of doubt, but finally receives church sanction,
160-61;
growth of schools, 162-3;
believes in undenominational schools, 165;
first 'outside' student, and his accomplishments, 167-8;
becomes surveyor of shipping for Lloyd's, 169;
catches an Eskimo about to break open a box of T.N.T. with an axe, 172;
bath-tub from the wrecked _Bay Rupert_ and its fate, 173-4;
invited to lecture before Royal Geographical Society, and awarded
Murchison Prize, 182;
sixty miles to a patient over slob ice, then adrift on an ice-pan all
night, 196-201;
rescued by sealers, 202-3;
decides to bring his mother to America, where he is about to receive
college degrees, 205;
informs her of his proposal of marriage, 208-9;
marries Anne Elizabeth Caldwell MacClanahan, 211;
reflections on marriage as a scheme of life, 215-16;
lecture tours and their side-lights, 217-220;
personal attitude toward alcohol, 222-3;
presented with a three-masted schooner by George B. Cluett of Troy, with
a double-edged Biblical inscription, boat later lost in voyage from
Brazil, 225;
new schooner presented by Cluett family, followed by loss of hospital
ship _Strathcona_ after being reconditioned, 225-6, 226-7;
_Strathcona II_ bought at Southampton, England, and crosses to St.
John's under own steam, 227-8;
off for a month's holiday to Rome and Greece, 229-31;
joins Harvard Surgical Unit and goes to France, 194, 237;
returns to Labrador, 234;
anonymous donor provides dry-dock for St. Anthony, another 'Grenfell's
folly,' 239;
new survey for charts of Labrador promoted by donations and volunteer
specialists, 240-44;
endowment campaign a success, 247;
death of John Mason Little, 248;
new discovery of instantaneous freezing and its potentialities for
Labrador, 250-51;
Discretionary Fund and its usefulness, 260-63;
'back to the land' movement launched successfully, 265-266;
amputates a leg with a pocket knife, 275;
tour round the world begun, 294;
visit to 'Grenfell family vaults,' 296;
Tomb of Christ a shocking fraud, 298;
in India, 301;
meets Gandhi, 301-2;
in China, 303-5;
in Japan, 305-6;
presented with Livingstone Gold Medal by Royal Scottish Geographical
Society, 308;
Berea College confers degree, 308-9;
other honours, 310;
created Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George,
316;
elected Lord Rector of St. Andrews University, 317;
story of the nurse who performed an operation and saved patient's life,
322-3;
long roll of volunteer service, 324 ff.;
meaning of religion before and after Christ's time, 336;
its true relation to the phases of ordinary life, 337-40;
the dead still live and exercise an influence over mankind, a lesson in
the story of 'Uncle George,' 342-3;
faith the be-all in the link with God, 343-8
Grenfell, Wilfred Thomason, elder son of Sir Wilfred, 211
Grenfell Alumni Association formed at a dinner in N.Y., 333
Grenfell Association, assailed as 'menace to honest trade,' vindicated by
enquiry commission, 141-2;
takes over undenominational boarding-school, 165;
gives supplementary outside education, 168;
futile struggle against poachers in the reindeer herd, 190, 217, 326
Grenfell Association of Great Britain and Ireland, 217, 330
Grenfell Association of Newfoundland, 217
'Grenfell Cloth,' its uses, 126, 287
Grenfell-Labrador Medical Mission, 217
'Grenfell Tickle,' 130
Grenfell Town, 104
Grenville, Sir Richard, a famous forbear of Sir Wilfred's, 72
Grimsby, fishermen from, 117-18
Gulf of St. Lawrence, 169, 237, 312
Gulf Stream, bathes English coast, 88
Gull Island, 88
Gunning for birds, 5-6
Guns, temptation for their use, 124-5
'H factor' of the quantum theory in charity, 260-62, 300
Hadley, Arthur T., President of Yale, 318
Hamilton Inlet, 79;
charted, 240
Hammond, John Hays, establishes fur-farm, 250
Hampstead, 35, 49
Hanbury, Sir Thomas, 20
Hans, an Eskimo of the Polaris expedition, 113
Hare Bay, a fall through the ice, at 10 below zero, 145, 190;
adrift off the island, 202
Harkness, Edward, American philanthropist, 319
Harlech, 41
Harrington, Labrador, 97;
hospital station, 254, 264;
electric light and X-ray plant installed, 277, 282, 312
Harrow school and its restrictions, 26
Harvard University, to give an M.A. to Sir Wilfred, 205, 241;
has a Grenfell Alumni Association, furnishes volunteer, who gets his 'H'
for cooking, 327
Hassanein Bey, his explorations in the Lybian Desert, 295
Hatter's Cove, in St. Louis Bay, 276;
nursing station abandoned, 277
Havelock, Sir Henry, at relief of Lucknow, 42
Hebron, on the Labrador Coast, 163
Heligoland, given to the Kaiser by England, 59, 61, 63
Henley (or Château), a British fort, 108
Henson, Dr. Hensley, Bishop of Durham, 56
Hermitage, the, 20
Herring fishery, 69
Heswall, 3
Hill, Miss Rosamond, _see_ MacClanahan, Mrs. E. B.
Hillard, Miss Mary R., at Westover School, 327
Hodd, Dr. Donald Gordon, his equipment at hospital and nursing stations
increased, 254
Holy Islands, 261
Homer comes to mind in visit to Rome, 229
Homer, Louise, helps Labrador cause, 256
'Honourable Company of Merchant Adventurers,' the Hudson's Bay Co., 251
Hopedale, Labrador, 243
Hospital needs, the quest to furnish them, 102, 103
Hot springs of Iceland, 117
Hot Springs of Virginia for a honeymoon, 211
Houdini, Harry, mystery in his amazing acts, 347
Houghteling, Miss Harriot, marries Dr. Curtis, 328
Hudson Bay Straits, 88
Hudson's Bay Co., 88;
effects of the depression, 89, 103, 130, 132;
fox-farm at Romaine, 149, 152;
its new boat, _Bay Rupert_, wrecked, 172;
its factor an expert witness in reindeer killing, 192;
fox-farm still running, 251;
makes use of new process of instantaneous freezing, 251, 252-3, 269;
exports blueberries to America, 271;
erects nursing station at Nain, 278
Huguenot refugees at Spitalfields, 286
Hull, 64;
fishermen from, 116
'Hundred of Wirral,' ancient borough, 3
Hurricane of 1908 and its wreckage, 179-180
Huskies, _see_ Dogs
Hut, Sir William, 19
Hutchins, Dr. Robert M., President of Chicago University, 309
Hutchinson, Miss, an aunt of Sir Wilfred's at Hyères, 19
Huxley, Thomas H., criticism of public school teaching, 30
Ice for drinking-water, 111
Icebergs, their action, 115
Ice-cap of continent studied by scientists, 243
Iceland, fishery in its waters its one asset, the land barren, 116-17;
hospital schooners with fishing fleet, 119;
Sir Wilfred's essay at horseback riding, 210
Ice-pans, a danger to steamships, 105-6;
at the sealing-grounds, 112-14
India, pictured by its history, 301, 302
Indian Harbour, 79, 122;
need of lighthouse supplied by Government, 179;
hurricane of 1908 and its wreckage, 179;
its hospital, 254, 274, 278, 330
Indian Tickle, its little church as a lighthouse, 106;
wrecks of a night, 178
Indians, original natives of Labrador, 87, 97-8;
Hudson's Bay Co. finds remunerative work for them, 252
Industrial Department of schools, in charge of Lady Grenfell, 165-6;
proportion of students sent out who return for service, 166-7;
first 'outside' student and his accomplishments, 167-168;
rug-making an ideal occupation, 284;
varied products of the department, 285-6;
report of its present
manager quoted, 287-9;
clothing problem solved, 289;
new cars presented by ex-Governor of Vermont and Henry Ford, 290;
bad conditions under which work is performed, 292;
shops run at great profit, 329, 333
'Innuits,' 88
Instantaneous freezing, methods of preserving foodstuffs indefinitely,
250-51
Institution that would care for girls, 220, 222
International College, Smyrna, a graduate acts as guide to the Grenfell
party, 230
International Grenfell Association incorporated, 217;
plan of an endowment, 245, 246, 280, 326, 329
Internationalism coming to be the slogan of thinkers, 234
Ireland, Archbishop, his stand on public schools, 165
Irvine, Sir James, Principal of St. Andrews and Fellow of Royal Society,
319
Irving, Sir Henry, 54
Isaiah speaks of converting men, 339
Isle of Man, 39
Israel, the mate, prefers surveying to fishing, but miscalculates nature
of the profession, 181
Ivory industry grows from need of workfor men, 286-7
J., his unfortunate stutter, 25
Jack the Ripper, operating in the slums, 39
Jackson, Rev. Sheldon, 'milk providence' of Alaska, advises use of
reindeer, 185
Jericho, 298
Jews, society for their conversion, 34
Job Bros. and Co. donate building for hospital, 79
John the Baptist beheaded for a present truth, 234
Johns Hopkins Hospital, 280
Jordan River, 297
Joseph of Arimathaea, 298
Josephus, _Works_, a fisherman's resource, 164
Jowett, Dr. Benjamin, classical scholar, 9
Kaiachououk, Eskimo chieftain, his son a popular exhibit at Chicago
World's Fair, 151
Kane, Capt. Abraham, of the sealing fleet, 110
Kantara, 297
Kedron River, 297
Kennan, George, his experience with deer in Siberia, 187
Kennett River swimming-pool, 16
Kew Garden authorities on lichens and mosses advise on reindeer food, 185
Khartoum, 297
Kickapoo Indians and their 'cures,' 336-7
Kindergarten a doubtful place, but receives churchly sanction, 160-61
King, Hon. W. Mackenzie, 310
King-Hall, Stephen, gospel of his play _B. J. One_, 142
King James Bible in relation to Labrador's boundary line, 87
King Midas, a simile, 146
Kingsley, Charles, 2, 118, 248;
his notion of Christianity, 258, 304, 342, 344
Kipling, Rudyard, 317
Kish, home of kings, 300
Knox, John, 317
_Kossak_ of Grenfell Cloth, a product of the Industrial Department, 287
_Kotik_, symbol of 'the Lamb of God,' evokes a woolly toy lamb, 80
_Kyle_, goes to the assistance of wrecked steamer _Bay Rupert_, 172
Labrador, 73, 74, 77-81, 83;
'discovered by the English, nothing in it of value,' a cartographer
described it, 86;
its ownership fought for, offered in sale to Canada by Newfoundland, 86,
87;
fisheries its main industry, 89;
speech, superstitions, and lore of its people, 90-92;
its desolation, 95, 96;
earth crust mostly the mineral Labradorite, 98-9;
its mineral resources, 100-101;
attitude of its people toward doctors changing, 108-9;
its 'whelping ice,' 111;
its sources of wealth, 116;
charm of cruising on it in the fall, 121;
return to the fishing fleets, 129;
how it 'went dry,' 134;
a trade custom, 135;
prices of furs, 147;
its fox-farm, 147-8;
survey to be made by Prof. Darling, 150;
hope of future in its children, 159;
death toll of tuberculosis, 183;
home of the caribou, 185;
herd of reindeer provided by help of _Boston Transcript_, 188;
profits from work of volunteers, 214-15;
now in touch with whole world through radio, 237;
new survey being made, 240-44;
attractions as a tourist resort, 244;
new process of freezing food of great commercial benefit, 251;
Greenland-Labrador airway coming route for rapid transport, 264-5;
potentialities in agriculture, 265-6;
wild berries a neglected asset, 271
_Labrador Doctor, A_, 1
Labradorite, mineral of Labrador's earth crust, 99, 290, 293
'Lady of the Snows,' 101
La Fontaine, fables of, 20
Lake Forest, Ill., home of Lady Grenfell, 209-11
Lake Michigan, 209
Lake Placid Club, 287
Land question in Ireland, an implication, 69
Lapland herd of reindeer purchased, 188
Lapps, reindeer herders, 88;
families hired to teach care of reindeer, 188;
depart on being refused more pay, 189
Laurier, Sir Wilfrid, 310
Lawrence, Sir Henry, 300
Lee, Gen. Robert E., 209
Lemmings as food for foxes, 148
Lewis, Island of, and the herring fishery, 69-70
Libraries, their usefulness along the Coast, 164
Lighthouses, absence of, cause of needless wrecks, 177;
Double Island Light, near Battle Harbour, the first on the Labrador
Coast, 177;
at Indian Harbour, 178
Lincoln, Abraham, still an influence, 342
Liquor, the traffic and its implications, 131;
on the Coast and in the fishing fleet, 220-23
Lister, Sir Joseph, operates on Algernon Grenfell, 48
Little, John Mason, dies, his ashes deposited in the face of a cliff on
the Coast, 248, 312, 315-16, 330
Little Church of St. Andrew the Fisherman, at St. Anthony, 248
Liverpool, slums of, 3
Livingstone, David, 308; still an influence, 342
Livingstone Gold Medal presented to Sir Wilfred by Royal Scottish
Geographical Society, 308
Lockwood School, at Cartwright, second collection of children in Labrador,
155;
its expansion helped by Francis Sayre, 155;
replaces burned Gordon School, 277
London Hospital, 29-30;
its patients, influence of its inefficiency, 31-3, 59
London University, 30, 31, 33, 45
Lord Lieutenant of Denbighshire, 29
Lucknow, siege of, 2, 300
Lulworth Castle and Cove, 44
Luther, Miss Jessie, of Providence, takes charge of the Industrial
Department, 285, 287, 329
Lybian Desert, explored by Hassanein Bey, 295
MacClanahan, Anne Elizabeth Caldwell ('the lady in black'), becomes
fiancée of Dr. Grenfell, 209;
marries him, 211
_See also_ Grenfell, Lady
MacClanahan, Col. Edmund Burke, father
of Lady Grenfell, 209, 210;
fought in Confederate Army, 209
MacClanahan, Mrs. E. B. (Miss Rosamond Hill), mother of Lady Grenfell, 209
MacClanahan, Kinloch, 210
McColl, Messrs., of Quebec, donate 10,000 gallons of gasoline toward
expenses of Labrador survey, 241-2
McGill University, admits Sir Wilfrid to fellowship, 310
MacGregor, Sir William, names Grenfell Tickle, 130;
surveys Labrador and makes charts that are accepted by Royal
Geographical Society, 180-81, 182
Mackenzie River District, reindeer herd for, purchased by Government, 188
MacLeod, Miss, helps raise chief St. Anthony school to high educational
standard, 329
MacMillan, Donald B., used 'Grenfell Cloth' at North Pole, 126;
starts Eskimo school at Nain, 163, 309
'Mad G.,' his eccentricities, 24-6, 29
Maeterlinck, Maurice, experience of life as expressed in his _Blue Bird_,
346
Makkovik, its Moravian Mission boarding-school, 163
Mammie's retort to her master on organizing, 345
_Maraval_, power yacht, 255, 278
Marine lawsuit in English court for more than a hundred years, 225
_Mariposa_, wrecked on Forteau Point, picked clean by fishermen, 170
Marketing products of Labrador by touring car, 290
Marlborough College, as a preparatory school, 12;
its situation, environment, customs, games, 12 ff., 48, 54
Marley, his frozen world, 260
Marriage, philosophy of, forces itself upon the thought of Sir Wilfred,
206;
reflection and a fast steamer hasten an avowal, 207-8;
a ring to seal the fact, and then consummation of success, 211;
as a scheme of life, 215-16
Mars Hill, where St. Paul preached to the Athenians, 230
Mary, Queen, favours Labrador frozen salmon, 251
Mason, A. E. W., novelist, in a life-saving exhibition, 118
Massachusetts General Hospital, volunteer nurses sought there and found,
322-3
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, supplies coloured civil engineer
volunteer, 324
Massachusetts State College of Agriculture, at Amherst, teaches remedies
for pests, 266, 270
Mathematics, only science that can prove anything, 1
Matteson, Paul, helps save wrecked _Pendragon_ by manning pumps all night,
180
_Matthew_, John Cabot's ship, 72
_Mauretania_, and her passengers, on a certain memorable trip, 205-8;
for the return to America, 231
_Mayflower_, a comparison, 151
Mecca, 295
Medes and Persians, laws of, 1
Melchett, Lord, 317
Memorial tablet to War dead, presented by Governor of Vermont, unveiled in
St. Anthony Hospital, 315
Menai Straits, 43
Menier, Henri, takes remnant of Mission's reindeer herd on his Anticosti
Island, 195
Mesopotamia, 299
Methodist school, 159
Metropolitan Opera, helps Labrador cause annually, 256
_Mexico_, with food supplies, first experience of a wreck, 169
Middle Ages, spirit of, in Government monies for sectarian schools, 159
Middlebury College offers degree of D.D. to Sir Wilfrid, 309-10
Midnight Sun among the attractions of Labrador, 244
Milk the crying need of the Coast, 183, 185;
richness of the reindeer's, 186
Mink-breeding proves remunerative, 150
Mission fleet grows with accessions from Holland and France, 119
Moloch in Scripture lessons, 11
Montagnais Indians, inhabit interior Labrador, 87;
hereditary foes of Eskimos, 87
Montreal, by radio, 237
Moody, Dwight L., evangelist, 33, 309, 310
Moody, William Revell, son of Dwight L., President of Middlebury College,
offers Sir Wilfred degree of D.D., 309-310
Moonshining case of Paddy, and its odd course, 192-4
Moravian Brethren, work among the Eskimos, 80, 81;
one christens Eskimo boy Pomuik 'Gabriel,' 152
Moravian Mission among the Eskimos, 76, 80;
its boarding-school at Makkovik, 163
Moret, Dr., establishes new school at St. Mary's River after fire, 254,
330
Morgenthau, Henry, American Ambassador to Turkey, his kindness a
delightful memory, 231
Morris, Judge Edward P., represents
Newfoundland at opening of St. Anthony Hospital, 312
Mortola, La, gardens at, 20
Moseley, Miss Marion, of Chicago, starts child welfare work, 270, 271
Moses, on the closing of the Red Sea waters, 294;
exodus from Egypt, 297
Mt. Everest, 243
Mt. Snowdon, 41, 43
Mrs. 'Arris, 339
Mugford Tickle, and a premature birth, 107
Murchison Prize awarded to Sir Wilfred by Royal Geographical Society, 182
Murray, Miss, 329
Murray Hill, murder at, cleared by clever detective work, 50
Mussolini, Benito, his epigram on Italy, 183
Mutton Bay, Nursing Station, Labrador, 254, 276, 290
Naaman, 298
Nain, 81, 99;
Commander MacMillanstarts Eskimo school, 163;
Hudson's Bay Co. erects nursing station, 278
Nakvak, 98;
a gorge of the Labrador, 152
Nansen, Dr. Fridtjof, 317
Nashville, Tenn., 209
National Academy of Social Sciences gives recognition to Sir Wilfred, 310
National Lifeboat Society, 42
Needlework Guild of America, Labrador Branch, 157
Nehemiah and his record, a safe example to follow, 207-8, 348
Nelson, Lord, his greatest victory, 208
_Neptune_, ready for the sealing grounds, 110, 111, 114
Neston, village of parish church where Grenfell family worshipped, 10
New England Grenfell Association, 217, 309, 325
Newfoundland, makes claim to Labrador, offers to sell it to Canada, 86, 87
ff.;
among the seal hunters, 111;
caribou at home in the North for centuries, 185;
refuses protection to Mission's reindeer herd, 190-91;
promises protection too late, 195;
Government free freight on steamers and free customs entry in work on
Labrador survey, 242;
could profit by example of Japan in stimulating new industries, 306;
sends Judge Morris as representative when St. Anthony Hospital is
opened, 312
New York preachers and news heard by radio in Labrador, 237
New York University, gift to Sir Wilfred, 308
New Zealand by radio, 237
Niagara compared with Grand Falls of Labrador, 101
Nightingale, Florence, 256
Nile water carried to Jerusalem by train, 297
_Nordfelt_, stranded, provides many tons of coal, 170
North Cape, 88
Northcliffe, Lord, 207
North-West River, its Yale School, 162, 327;
new church built, 248, 254;
greenhouse erected, 266;
hospital deserves recognition, 274;
is destroyed by fire, 277
Notre Dame Bay, 278, 279
Nurses, their work of service, 276-7
Observation, its advantage over memory, 45-6
Odell, Noel, climber of Mt. Everest, Professor of Geology at Cambridge
University, reports on Labrador mountains, 242-3
Œuvres de Mer of Paris, its hospital schooners with the fisheries fleet,
119
Okkak, 79
Old Bailey, 49
Omdurman, 297
Ostend, 61
Oxford House, University, 55
Oxyrhynchus, 296
Paddon, Dr. Harry, gets use of yacht _Maraval_ for work in his district,
254;
his station at North-West River, 278, 330
Paddy fails as an instructed witness, 193
Palestine, 297-8
Paper a product of Labrador, 100
Parkgate, place of Sir Wilfred's birth, 2, 10
Parsonage a new acquisition, 249
Parsons, Dr. Charles, graduate of Johns Hopkins, takes charge of
Twillingate Hospital, 280
Patras, Greek distributing centre for Labrador fish, 229
Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews the faith applied to industrial works of
volunteers, 214
Pavlova, 296
Peace River district gets two herders and fifty deer of the Labrador herd,
194
Peary, Admiral Robert E., career of his husky puppy, 184
Peat as a fuel and in a garden compost, 267
Peirce, Miss Margaret, her work has helped the Industrial Department, 333
_Pendragon_, wrecked near Indian Harbour, saved by volunteer pumpers, 180
Percival, Dr. John, 11
Percy comes to St. Anthony to 'get learning,' 163, 167
Pergamos, Asia Minor, 230-31
Petticoat Lane, 30
Pharaohs, 4;
plague of baksheesh in the land of, 294
Philip of Macedon, 296
Phillips, Miss, of the Animal Rescue League, Boston, 215
Photographing Labrador from the air, 242
Piastre Bay, its successful fox-farm, 149
Pigs successful in clearing lands and producing pork, 269
Pilley's Island, hospital started, 279
Pistolet Bay, 190
Pittsburgh, and the conversion of men, 342
Plato comes to mind in a visit to Athens, 229
Plutarch's _Lives_, a fisherman's resource, 164
Poachers among the reindeer, 191;
one culprit convicted, 192
Point of Ayr, 4
Poison to catch foxes, 148;
joke on fox-hunters, 149-50
Polaris expedition, rescue of its members, 113
Pomuik, son of Eskimo chieftain, his skill with 30-foot lash of dog-whip,
a popular side-show at Chicago World's Fair, 151;
found dying among band of Eskimos, brought to Battle Harbour Hospital,
152;
aurora lights up sky at his burial, 152
Poplar, 30
Pottery from native clay, 293
Pratt Institute, N.Y., 162, 167, 213
Pressley-Smith, Miss, in the Industrial Department, 329
Priest helped nurse perform an operation, 323
Prince Edward Island, begins fox-breeding, 148, 267
_Princess May_, steam launch, 79, 122, 251
Princeton, students provide an orphanage, 158;
has Grenfell Alumni Association, 327
Prohibition law in America, 222-3
_Prospero_, ship, 93
Ptolemy, 296
Public School Camps, arrangement and beneficial work, 66-7
Puffin, the, parson deck-hand, 42
Pumphrey, Bevan, on the water-supply job at Cartwright, 334
Pwllheli Harbour, 41
Rabbits as possible food for young foxes, 269
Race for life, 6
Ratcliff Highway, 30, 35
Radio and wireless telegraphy partially solve communication problem, 237
'Rafting' of ice floes, 115, 236
_Raleigh_, cruiser, wrecked on the Coast and a total loss, 171
Ramah, 98
Ramsey Harbour, 40
_Ranger_, steamship, finds the lost _Sir Donald_ and tows her to safe
harbour, 109
_Rattle, The_, publication run by Algernon Grenfell while at Oxford, 7-8
Razors as burial implements, 100
Records of early days, must stand, 1
Red Bay and its successful co-operative store, 137-8, 140;
longing for a boarding-school, 163, 282
Red Cross, at Washington, forbidden to send wheat out of the country, 250,
345
Red Sea, 4
Red Wharf Bay, 43
Redwood, Hugh, his _God in the Slums_, 341
Reikyavik, in Iceland, 117, 210
Reindeer, as substitute for cows, most economical to keep, 185;
every part of them valuable, 186;
breed more regularly than cattle, 187;
herd provided by help of _Boston Transcript_, 188;
thrive and multiply, 189;
protection of the herd by Government refused, 190;
poachers give endless trouble, 191-2;
Canadian Government agrees to care for remnant of herd, 194;
removed to Anticosti Island, 195
Religion in education in the 'North,' 159
Repton, school, 11
Revolution (American) and Labrador fishing rights, 89
Richards, Parson, of Flowers Cove, has finest calf in village, 269
Rimmon, House of, 124
Riviera, its terraced cliffs, 264
Rivington, Sir Walter, 48
Robert College and Girls' School in Turkey, breeds an optimism of
delightful memory, 131
Rochester Athenaeum, 213
Rockall, near Iceland, 116
Rocky Bay, where Canada placed Mission's reindeer at beginning of War, 194
Roddick, Sir Thomas, presents a jolly-boat, 104
Rogers, Will, his sense of humour a real value in life, 339
Rogues' Roost, harbour in Seal Islands, 324
Romaine, fox-farm of the Hudson's Bay Co., 149
Roman Catholic school, 159
_Rose of Torridge_, wrecked on the Coast, 171
Rotary Club, 340
Round Hill Island, described as St. John's Island by John Cabot, 74
Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, 31, 33, 38;
presents gift of fellowship to Sir Wilfred, 311
Royal Geographical Society accepts charts of survey of Labrador made by
Sir William MacGregor, 182;
gives its blessing and endorsement to new Labrador survey, 242, 259;
extends recognition to Sir Wilfred, 310
Royal Scottish Geographical Society presents Livingstone Gold Medal to Sir
Wilfred, 308
Royal Society, 319
Royal Society of Medicine confers membership on Sir Wilfred, 311
_Roysterer_, fishing smack, 38, 60
Russia, refuses permit to visit, 299-300;
adopts alternative of religion, 344
St. Andrews, Lord Rectorship candidacy offered to Sir Wilfred, he is
elected, 316-18, 319
St. Andrew's Church, 39
St. Anthony, its climate severe, 88, 94;
winter station opened, 122;
closed for summer, 129;
volunteers build wooden hospital, later replaced by fireproof building,
130-31;
co-operative store established, 138-9;
Spot Cash Co-operative Co., Ltd., successfully launched, 141;
its early neglect and debts, 142-3;
its hospital, 144, 145;
fox-farm started, 147;
orphanage an international effort, 158;
its schools, 159, 162, 172, 188, 203, 205;
Sir Wilfred and his bride arrive, 211;
annual visits of Dr. Andrews, eye specialist, 217, 220;
made headquarters because of transportation difficulties, 236;
anonymous donor provides dry-dock, 239;
new church built, 248;
concrete block power-house, 249, 254, 266;
its peat bog, 267;
ripening of pumpkins, 268, 270;
its hospital graded A1, 274, 276, 278, 279, 290, 312, 315;
laying water pipe, 324;
patient brought to hospital in five and a half days from Conche, on
sledge drawn by men volunteers, 326, 331
St. Anthony and the legend he preached, 227
St. Christopher and the Christ child, 298
St. Francis, 340
St. John's, NF., in flames as Grenfell party approach city, 72-3, 78, 79,
84, 87, 109, 110, 113, 132-4, 139, 141;
its co-operative agent incurs great debt, 142-143, 172;
petition for protection of deer rejected by Government, 190-91;
Sir Wilfred and his bride sail for St. Anthony, 211, 220-22;
merchants aid project of Seamen's Institute, 224;
_Strathcona II_ arrives, 227;
fishery outfitting moves largely to Catalina, 257;
Y.M.C.A.-Y.W.C.A. activities, 257-8;
doctors' annual meeting, 274, 278
St. John's Harbour, first landfall across the Atlantic, 72
St. John's Island, named by John Cabot in describing Round Hill Island, 74
St. Louis Bay, 276, 277
St. Mary's, in the Scilly Islands, 11
St. Mary's River, its school supported by Princeton boys, 162-3, 254, 277,
327
St. Paul, reminders of him in a visit to Mars Hill and Ephesus, 230
St. Paul's 'reasonable service,' 348
St. Pierre, 221
St. Simon Stylites, a simile, 172
Salmon as a commercial product, 270
Salvation Army school, 159
Sands of Dee, 2 _passim_
Sandwich Bay, its wireless station, 237;
orphanage destroyed by fire, 249, 269
Sankey, Ira D., evangelist, 33
Santa Barbara, Cal., 217
_Santa Maria_, a comparison, 151
Sargent, Henry, half-clad on the ice after explosion of the steamship
_Viking_, 331
'Sassenach,' 318
Savage, William, chairman of executive committee, 334
Sawmill as a business enterprise, 143-5;
assembling the parts of the machinery a Chinese puzzle, 146
Sayre, Francis, son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, helps expansion of building
at Cartwright, 156
Schenectady, by radio, 237
Schools, sectarian, fostered by Government in spirit of Middle Ages, 159;
kindergarten under suspicion, but clergy finally approve it, 160-61;
curriculum modified to fit education to environment, 162;
first 'outside' student and his accomplishments, 167-168
Schumann-Heink, Ernestine, helps Labrador cause, 236
Scientists interested in ice-cap of continent, 243
_Scotsman_, wrecked on the Coast, furnishes variety of Christmas goods,
170
Scribner's Sons, Charles, 334
Scrooge and the Ghost of the Past envisioned, 160;
his frozen world, 260
'Scunners' of the sealing fleet, 111
Seal fishery, its importance to Newfoundland, and laws relating to it,
110, 114;
depletion as source of wealth, 116;
an asset of Iceland, given to the Norwegians, 117
Seal Islands, 255, 278, 323
Seamen's Home in St. John's becomes resort for boozers, is closed, 223
Seamen's Institute, funds collected, and corner-stone laid by King George
V by cable, 223, 224, 257, 258
Sears, Prof. Fred Coleman, gives remedies for pests, 268
Sepsis, almost invariable in amputations, 48
'Seward's Folly,' 101
Shackleton, Sir Ernest, declared first English vessel sailing to
Newfoundland was named _Grenfell_, 72
Shadwell, 30, 33
Shaving among the Eskimos, 100
Sheep, black-face, from Scotland thrive, 269
Sherry's, a simile, 130
Shovel, Sir Cloudesley, visioned, 117
_Silver City_, steamer, brings Sir James Startin to opening of St. Anthony
Hospital, 312
Sinai Desert, 298
Singing among seamen, and their love of music, 115
_Sir Donald_, steamer presented to Mission by Lord Strathcona, goes
aground, 104, 105, 107;
disappears, sold by auction when found, 109; 129
Skerry Islands, and the Beehive Monastery, 68
Skin-grafting on a Catholic from mixed religions, 128
Slavery in Southern States, 135
Sledge travel, equipment, and food, 124-125
Smith, Donald, _see_ Strathcona, Lord
Smith, Miss Helen, 329
Smithfield, 48
Socrates, and the hemlock symptoms, 222;
philosopher comes to mind in visit to Athens, 229
Suliote Dance of the Greek girls, 231
Southborough, Lord, tells of opportunities for service among fishermen of
north-west Atlantic, 71
Spalding, Miss Katie, at head of Grenfell Association of Great Britain,
329-30
Spanish Main, precipitous cliffs a handicap to youth, 2, 121
_Speedy_, Earl Dundonald's warship, compared to the _Strathcona_, 121
'Sphinx, the,' sobriquet of Miss Eleanor Cushman, 327
Spitalfields, 286
Spotted Islands, 277
Srinagar and its great school, 303
Stained-glass window for new church in St. Anthony, 248
Stanley, Dean Arthur Penrhyn, 298
Startin, Admiral Sir James, represents English branch of Mission at
opening of St. Anthony Hospital, 312
Stimson, Dr. Louis, gives his racing yacht _Fleur-de-Lys_ to the Mission,
333
'Stinks,' chemical master at school, 21
Stirling, Mr. and Mrs. William R., 206, 207, 210
Stirling, Miss Dorothy, builds cottage for Grenfell Association, gives
root cellar, acts as head of Grenfell Association of Chicago, maid of
honour at marriage of Dr. Grenfell and Miss MacClanahan, 324-30
Stirling, Scotland, 206
Stornoway, 70
Straits of Belle Isle, 78, 87, 88, 137, 143, 155, 169, 221, 236, 238, 275
Stranger's Rest, The, famous highway, 35
_Strathcona_, hospital ship, launched at Dartmouth, England, 121;
butted over the ice to carry food to the sawmill, 146, 148, 154;
benefits liberally from wrecked steamship, 170, 172-6;
escapes destruction as by a miracle, 176-7;
helps stranded surveying party off sandbank, 181;
answers wireless appeal despite Sunday, 182, 218, 221;
badly rusted, but reconditioned by Lady Strathcona, later sinks in gale
of wind, 226-7
_Strathcona II_, bought at Southampton, England, and sent under own steam
to St. John's, 227-8;
helps in new Labrador survey, 242, 260, 278, 312;
strikes on reef, is lifted off by heavy wave, 312-15;
Harvard boys undertake its expenses, 327
Strathcona, Lady, provides for reconditioning hospital ship _Strathcona_,
which later sinks in gale of wind, 226
Strathcona, Lord (Donald Smith), interested in work of the Mission from
the first, 102;
presents steamer _Sir Donald_, 103;
again donor of hospital steamer _Strathcona_, 121;
once grew vegetables in Labrador, 266
Studd, J. E. and C. T., evangelists, 34
Sturdee, Sir Frederick Charles Doveton, had destroyed German Pacific fleet
at the Falklands, 315
Sunday, in law and as a day of rest, 114, 115, 182
Superstitions and lore of Labradoreans, 90-92
Surrey Woods, 27
Survey as scientific enterprise, 240
Swanage, 44
Swansea, 121
Sydney, C.B., 213
Syrian Desert, 299
T Wharf, Boston, where schooner _George B. Cluett_ began first voyage,
226
'Taffy,' nursery rhyme of, 3
Tariff barriers an economic paradox, 272, 273, 290
Teachers, dependence on volunteers, 161, 165
Technical training above classical learning principal aim, 166;
requirements of students sent out as to their return, 166-7;
first 'outside' student and his accomplishments, 167-8
Tel el Amara, 296
Terschelling, 61
Thebes, 296
Thomas, Miss M. Carey, President of Bryn Mawr, 206
Thorshavn, in Iceland, 116
Threldkeld-Edwards, Herbert, volunteers as chauffeur, 334
Tides on the Coast, singularity of their flow, 237
_Tigris_, her rescue of members of Polaris expedition, 113
Tilbury Docks, 30
Tilt Cove, NF., 121
Timber, huge preserves in Labrador, 100
Tiny Tim, thaws the frozen world of Scrooge and Marley, 260
T.N.T., box of, part of the _Bay Rupert's_ treasure, about to be broken
open with an axe, 172
Tommy, and treasures he hauled up from the wrecked _Bay Ruper_t, 174
Topler, George, 261
Tower of Babel, 299
Toys and games lacking in child development on the Coast, 160
Transportation in winter months dependent on dog-teams, 236
Trapper's 'quality of mercy,' 149
Treves, Sir Frederick, lecturer in anatomy and surgery, 33, 35, 36, 44,
46-8, 52;
his interest in the fishing fleets, 59-60;
holiday as his guest on the Scilly Islands, 117-18
Trevorth, 43
Trieste, on route of world tour, 294
Trinity Bay, and the hazard of seal fishermen, 111-12
Truck Acts, for the protection of fishermen, 64
Truck system among the Eskimos and on the Labrador, 81-2, 135
Truro, Agricultural College, N.S., 213, 266
Tuberculosis, its death toll on the Coast, 183
Tuck, Raphael, 213, 215
Tucker, James, 266
'Tunits,' a race of Eskimos, 98
Tutankhamen, 296
Twain, Mark, cited, 47
Twillingate, hospital deserves recognition, is graded A1, 274, 276, 278-80
Tyrrel, J. B., his pictures of deer herds, 187-8
'Uncle George,' his benefit from the Discretionary Fund, 263, 342
'Uncle Joe' shoots a caribou, 190
Unemployment horrors in the face of plenty, 272-3
Ungava Bay, 105, 129, 181
Upper Canada College, Toronto, 213
Ur of the Chaldees, 300
Vaughan, Norman, with Byrd South Pole Expedition, driving dogs, 328
Vestmann Islands, 117
Victoria, Queen, 20;
becomes interested in fishing fleets, permits first hospital boat to be
named in her honour, 67
Victoria Park, 54, 55
_Viking_, wrecked on the Coast, 171;
what its filming has meant to Labrador, 256;
Varick Frissell lost when vessel blew up, 326, 331
Wakefield, Lord, gives 1000 gallons of lubricating oil toward expenses of
Labrador survey, 242
Wales, Princess of, visits 'the Elephant Man,' 57-8
_Walrus_, wrecked on the Coast, 171
Wapping, 30
Ward Belmont School of Nashville, Tenn., makes up therapist's salary every
year, 327
Water-power in Labrador unlimited, 100
Weather not a portent at birth, 2
Webster, Dr. Harrison, volunteers and helps start hospital at Pilley's
Island, is subsequently killed in Great War, 279
Wellington, Duke of, at Sir Frederick Treves's grand regatta, 118
Wembley, England, Labrador products sold at Imperial Exhibition, 291
Wentworth Institute, Boston, 213
Westminster, Duke of, his table of Labradorite, 99
Westminster Abbey, and the coronation of King George V, 224
Westover School provides helpers and help, 327
Weymouth, 44
Whale fishery, an asset of Iceland, given to the Norwegians, 117
_What Every Woman Knows_, Barrie's play, 256, 344
White, Miss Emma, of Boston, volunteer worker in Labrador, her advice
sought on Mrs. Grenfell's visit to America, 205
Whitechapel Road, 30
White Cockade, a tickle at Indian Harbour, 179
White Point light, off Indian Tickle, 178
Wilhelm, Kaiser, receives Heligoland from England, 59
Willcox, Dr. Hilton, went with Byrd South Pole Expedition as deck-hand,
328
Williams, George, sportsman, friend of the Mission, 333
Williams College to confer an LL.D. upon Sir Wilfred, 205
Willway, Dr. Frederick William, volunteers as winter doctor at Battle
Harbour, 109
Wilson, Woodrow, 155
_Windsor_, off to the sealing grounds, 111
_Windsor Lake_, wrecked on the Coast, 171
Winnington Ingram, Arthur Foley, Bishop of London, 56
Wireless telegraphy and radio partially solve communication problem, 237
_Wistaria_, H.M.S., specially detailed to convey Sir William Allardyce to
opening of St. Anthony Hospital, 317
'Wonderstrands,' as the Norsemen called Labrador, 86
Wood pulp a product of Labrador, 100
Wooden leg contributed to a Catholic through a variety of creeds, 128
'Wops,' in quest of Labradorite, 99;
salve supplies from wrecked _Bay Rupert_, 172, 213, 245, 246;
help on new water and power supply plant at Cartwright, 249, 267, 309,
320, 324, 325, 326-9, 331, 333, 334
World's Fair, Chicago, its Eskimo Encampment a popular exhibit, 151
Wreck on the ice, and consequences, 115-116;
many on the Labrador Coast, 169 ff.
Wrist watch, smashed, an incident of rigid regulations on the
battle-field, 232-3
X, Dr. Charles, and the torn cheque, 247
X-rays, criminal in a doctor to neglect their use, 347
Xerxes' Seat, conjures up picture of the great battle, 230
Yale, students provide one of the orphanages, 158;
now has Grenfell Alumni Association, 327
Yale Falls, for water-power, 240, 243
Yale School, at North-West River, built and supported by Yale boys, 162,
327;
Varick Frissell responsible for its establishment, 331
Yangtze-Kiang, 303
Yarmouth, 60, 72
Y.M.C.A.-Y.W.C.A. activities in St. John's, 257-8
_Yosemite_, one of many wrecks of a night off Indian Tickle, 178
Young, Miss Laura, in the Industrial Department, 329
Zuyder Zee reclamation, 264
THE END
_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.
Transcriber's Notes
The following changes were made to the text:
p 132 -> inserted missing letter: "in the [i]ndustry"
p 144 -> inserted [not] in "We do [not] like opening" as dictated by the
sense of the text.
p 269 -> inserted missing letter: "all shades o[f] thought"
index -> removed reference to non-existing page 350 in entry for Curtis,
Dr. Charles
The spelling of all other words is as in the original. Some small
corrections were made to punctuation.
[The end of _Forty Years for Labrador_ by Wilfred T. Grenfell]